Stacia stormed back to her quarters. When she reached her door, she hesitated. Bek still lay in med lab, his condition worsening. The doctors now had him in a coma-like state, hoping to arrest the progression of whatever swept through him. Her heart longed to be at his bedside. Unconsciously, Stacia ran her fingers in a light play across her lips. Reminding her of the near brush from when Yahya tried to kiss her only a few hours ago. His mouth only barely missing hers because she drew back at the last moment, wanting to avoid anything too intimate.

She slipped into her quarters. And tapped her head into the wall.

<How are you doing?> The edge of formality drained from Maya’s tone.

“What does my med telemetry tell you?”

<Basal temperature, heart rate, breathing all within expected parameters.>

“There you go. I’m fine.”

<Checking maintenance logs for eating and sleeping times.>

“Wait…” Stacia wondered how much of a smart-ass protocol Maya might have written for themselves.

<Have you actually eaten today?>

Perhaps it was her imagination, but Stacia could’ve sworn Maya made a tut-tutting noise similar to perusing a list and being dissatisfied by it.

“Lunch. Or maybe it was dinner?”

<One meal, noted. Half a serving of jollof rice with curried stew.>

“Yes, but, I was in a hurry…”

<Sleep telemetry recorded from 0230 to 0345.>

“It was a rough night.” Stacia hated the idea of being accountable to an entity who had access to all of her habits.

<Similar patterns marked for the previous five standard solar day/night cycles.>

Stacia sighed. “You’re like the most intrusive hall monitor ever.”

<What I am is … >

Maya’s vocal unit degenerated into a smear of static.

“Don’t keep me in suspense. What are you?” Stacia glanced up from her work. Maya’s vocal monitors reduced to white static, until even that dissolved into silence. Like the AI had been caught in a loop, a series of misfiring, taking them off line. As if they were the object of hacking a system collapse. “Maya?”

Only silence followed. Whenever some part of ship’s maintenance needed attending to, Stacia’s instinct was to call for Paki. But Paki was gone. Her ship, her command, was being stripped from her one piece at a time.