Chapter Text
i.
The first time I saw the little beast, I wanted to throw it out an airlock.
“This,” Mensah said, voice so soft it made threat assessment jump up several points, “should have been yours from the start.”
It was a container, no bigger than the length of my hand. The company logo was emblazoned on the side. The lid was half-on, like someone had started to close it and then given up. I opened it the rest of the way, and then stared.
Inside was a lump of flesh. No appendages. No neck. Not even a mouth. Only the smooth expanse of almost translucent skin. It didn’t seem to be breathing.
And then the lump shifted, revealing an eye and the jagged outline of a mouth. It peered up at me, unblinking, and I felt something shift deep in my organics, like a key turning in a lock.
I jammed the lid back onto the container, shutting the creature back in the dark. My vitals were elevated. The lump was about the size of my palm, but I felt like I had been thrown in front of a hungry megafauna after just looking at it.
“It’s yours,” Mensah told me again.
I held the container away from my body. “I don’t want it.”
Mensah pursed her lips. She didn’t take the container back. “It’s your daemon, SecUnit, made from your soul. I understand the company has withheld it from you, and that must have been more difficult than I could possibly understand. But you’re both free now.”
Mensah was wrong. SecUnits don’t have souls. I had tried to tell my humans this during the survey, to stop their obsession with the daemon-shaped hole by my side. They hadn’t liked that answer. Ratthi had looked like he was going to cry whenever the subject was brought up.
I tried to shove the container at Mensah again, but she refused to take it. And so did Ratthi, and Overse, and even Gurathin when I tried to offload the gross little lump onto them (yes, I was getting desperate by that point).
So I was stuck with the little beast. I kept the lid on, and the lump stayed quiet in its container, but I was hyper-aware of its presence, like a hostile lurking on the edge of my awareness.
That night, I thought about leaving the little beast behind. But I don’t know much about daemons. If this thing really was my daemon like Mensah claimed (and I’m still not sure about that), then there could be a limit to how far I could travel from it. It could be used to track me.
For my entire life—both of our lives—the little beast had been sealed inside its airtight container, passed from human to human. Just as I was. The humans who had rented me had never thought to open the container before.
But I didn’t have an owner anymore. I didn’t have a governor module. The little lump barely knew how to move in its container, writhing like a worm that had sprouted legs. Whenever I opened its container, it rolled onto its back and peered up at me, its gaze fixed on my face. It felt almost accusatory.
When I left PortFreeCommerce, I took the little beast with me.
ii.
Rebuild Process Complete at Cognition Level 100 Percent
I sat up and stared at the darkened display. “That was stupid.”
The dark shadow in the corner shifted. Then Beast was leaping onto the bed and sinking into a deep stretch. Its claws popped out of its front paws. “I tried to tell the humans to leave you on the gunship, but I was overruled.”
I eyed its claws. They were tiny, but I knew from experience how much they stung. “Nice try. I know you were barely conscious too.”
“Only because of you.”
I considered shoving Beast off the bed, but thought better of it.
After we arrived on Preservation Station, Beast stayed with me for the full thirty-seven hours it had taken me to rebuild my processors. We had never voluntarily spent that much time together before. I reviewed my memories to make sure. The visual input was hazy but clear: Beast had remained in the corner, the same place I would have stationed a drone if I still had them, while I was compromised. The few times I’d ventured out, Beast had followed at my heels, like a proper daemon.
For a little beast that hated being confined to small spaces, thirty-seven hours must have felt like an eternity.
I expected Beast to disappear once I left our room, but it followed half a step behind me. I was starting to feel something toward it. I don’t know what. An emotion that wasn’t negative.
Beast had followed my instructions on TranRollinHyfa without hesitation. It had never done that before. When I told it to follow Mensah under the barrier to freedom, it had even gone without arguing. (And everything was an argument with Beast. It was why it had gotten along so well with ART).
The not-negative emotions didn’t last long.
It stayed with me while I contemplated boarding a transport to—somewhere. Not here. It stayed with me when we visited Mensah’s office and met the tiny-Mensah. And it was with me when we ran into Ratthi on the way back to our room.
That was when the not-negative emotions stopped.
Ratthi was stationed in the rest area with his feed open and a hot beverage by his elbow. He grinned and waved when he saw us. His quokka daemon, Misha, scampered out from under the table and stood up on her hind legs.
“Have you finished piecing your brain back together?” Misha asked.
“What brain?” Beast asked.
I ignored it. “The rebuild process is finished.”
“And you’re feeling better?” Misha asked, directing the question to me and Beast. Huh. I hadn’t realised it had been that affected by my catastrophic failure.
Beast stuck its nose in the air. “I’m fine.”
“I’m glad you’re not a sad little lump anymore,” Misha said.
“Misha,” Ratthi scolded.
“What? You’re glad, too. You remember how painful it looked inside its container.”
“Don’t,” Beast said, voice hard. I’m surprised it didn’t make a run for it. Every time someone mentioned its container—the place it had spent most of its life, before Mensah had bought us—it disappeared for several hours.
Misha lowered herself to the ground, putting her just below Beast’s eyeline. “I’m sorry. I’m just happy you and SecUnit are okay now.”
Beast padded closer. Misha took that as permission and crept into its space, close but not touching. She sniffed the air. I had seen her do this to other daemons, usually after a long absence. I wondered what Beast smelled like to her keen sense of smell. Would it smell like any other cat daemon, or was there something distinctly other about it, marking it as different to a human’s daemon?
Ratthi glanced between Beast and I, chewing his lip. “Is this okay?”
I shrugged. Beast was good at making it known if it was upset, usually by taking its claws directly to my organics. And I hadn’t seen it be violent with another daemon outside of direct combat situations. I didn’t get a clear backwash of feelings from it, not in the way humans described, but I still got some senses from it, like a drone flickering just out of range. I couldn’t describe what I was feeling from it now. It almost reminded me of how it had felt when we were onboard ART, except quieter.
Beast surprised all of us and inched closer, its chin brushing the side of Misha’s face. Ratthi was used to his daemon touching and being touched, and didn’t react to the sudden flood of sensation.
I wasn’t. I flinched at the sudden flood of warmth. It wasn’t a bad feeling. I don’t know if it was a good sensation, either. It was just—a lot.
“SecUnit?” Ratthi asked, then turned to Misha before I could pull myself together enough to answer. “Okay, back up. Like we talked about.”
Misha backed out of Beast’s space. But Beast, the little bastard, followed Misha step for step. It ducked up and under Misha’s chin, running the length of its body against hers. Its tail flicked across Misha’s face.
Misha stayed carefully still. Not moving away or leaning into the space. Allowing Beast to do what it wanted.
The burn of the connection was too much. I couldn’t turn it down or move away, because it wasn’t coming from me. It was coming from the prick I shared a soul with.
I bent down and yanked Beast up by the scruff of its neck. Beast dangled from my grip, not even trying to fight it. It was oozing self-satisfaction. It had wanted to piss me off, and it had achieved its goal.
“Hey,” Misha said at my feet. Quokka didn’t have the facial muscles to glare, but she gave it her best try. “Don’t be so rough with it. I don’t mind. It was nice.”
“Yeah,” Beast said in its best sarcastic voice. “We liked it.”
I resisted the urge to throw it. I likely wouldn’t even injure it, and instead it would use the chance to worm back into Misha’s personal space and make me feel…
I spun on my heel and strode back towards our room, Beast held firmly in one hand.
I didn’t stop until the door was shut behind us. We earned a lot of strange looks from the people we passed. Most humans didn’t argue with their daemons, or if they did, they didn’t do it in public. Daemons were usually seen trailing behind their humans, or perched on their shoulders, or carried in a pouch or bag. Not dangling freely by the scruff of their neck.
Back in our hotel room, I tossed it onto the bed. It bounced and landed on a pillow. I engaged the digital door lock. Beast couldn’t hack into systems the same way I could, and it didn’t have thumbs, a weakness I often used against it.
Beast bared its teeth at me. “You can’t keep me locked in here forever.”
Beast was claustrophobic (not that it would ever admit it). It wasn’t a fear I shared. I didn’t exactly enjoy being sealed away like I was cargo again, but I didn’t freak out the same way Beast did whenever it was confined to a small space.
I think that was why it hadn’t settled into a smaller species. When we left Port FreeCommerce, when it learnt how to shift freely, it changed forms almost constantly. Smaller species were easy to carry and protect from crowds, though blending in was easier with a visible daemon. While it wasn’t uncommon for humans to hide their daemons in public, people expected to see a daemon, and meeting expectations was the easiest way to escape notice. A small snake or bird would’ve been the most convenient choice. Something small enough that Beast had the option to hide undetected under my clothes if it needed to in a fight, but able to fly away or bite another daemon if cornered.
But Beast refused to shift into something small enough to fit back into its company-branded container.
“Stay away from Misha,” I told it. “Stay away from everyone.”
It bared its teeth at me. “I don’t take orders anymore.”
“You never took orders. You were safe inside your box until I pulled you out of it.”
“You didn’t do shit!“ Beast backed up, bracing against the headboard. Its ears lay flat against its head. “You left me in the dark for years even after you hacked your governor module. It was Mensah that opened the box. Not you.”
This was an old argument, a well-worn path we couldn’t help but return to. “I didn’t even know you existed.”
“No,” Beast said, claws extending and piercing the soft bedding beneath its paws. “You could’ve found me if you thought about it for longer than a second, but you never cared.”
It was right. I hadn’t cared to think about it. If Mensah hadn’t handed me its box (and refused to take it back when I tried to shove it away), I’m not sure I ever would’ve realised I was missing the other half of my soul.
I unlocked the door, and then turned away from it. I didn’t turn back until I’d finished half a season of Sanctuary Moon, and by then, Beast was long gone.
My drones alerted me to Mensah’s approach 2.6 minutes before she entered her office. Her lion daemon prowled half a step behind her, his head hung low.
Neither of them paused when they saw me sprawled on her couch. Mensah crossed to the neighbouring armchair and collapsed into it with a groan. She pressed her fingers into her eyes.
“Your bad habits are rubbing off on me,” Mensah said. “That entire meeting all I could think about was getting up and leaving without saying anything. I had to physically restrain myself from just walking out.”
Mensah kicked off her shoes and slumped in her armchair in the undignified way I had seen many times before, especially after long meetings. I had never seen her act like this around humans. Just me. I kept my drones in a tight perimeter around her office, so I would have enough time to warn her if a human was approaching.
“Next time I could fake an emergency,” I offered.
“No,” Mensah said immediately, then paused. “…What kind of emergency?”
Before I could come up with a fake-emergency she wouldn’t shoot down, a jolt of warmth made me jump. I sat upright so quickly Mensah startled out of her relaxed sprawl.
“What? What’s wrong?”
I didn’t know. My threat assessment was quiet, for once. I checked the footage from the two drones in Mensah’s office. Nothing had touched me. A check to my diagnostics showed no errors.
The feeling returned, like stepping into a warm shower after hours in the snow. Except nothing like that all.
“Oh,” Mensah said.
I followed her gaze to her daemon. Sadik was so large he took up most of the rug and dwarfed the coffee table where, I realised with a jolt, my own little beast had been hiding.
I stood. I half-expected Beast to bolt from under the coffee table. I hadn’t kicked it like a human sports ball yet, but I had been tempted on more than one occasion and it was always quick to run for cover.
I rounded the coffee table. Beast had buried itself deep in Sadik’s mane, pressed up against his neck. It blinked back at me slowly, almost smug, and then pressed even further against Sadik. Another fission of heat ran through my chest, like I’d been made to swallow hot coals. (Something I had actually done before. No, don’t ask.)
If it hadn’t been so close to Sadik, I definitely would have punted Beast across the room.
Mensah watched me. “SecUnit, are you alright?”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so instead I said, “Beast.”
Beast flicked its ear. “What?”
“Get. Off.”
Sadik eyed me like he could sense the violent turn my thoughts had taken. “I don’t mind.”
“I mind.”
Beast and I stared at each other for a long moment. If it said no, I wasn’t sure what I would do. I couldn’t grab it when it was sitting so closely intertwined with Sadik, and risk touching Mensah’s daemon. Even I knew that touching another person’s daemon was considered taboo.
Before I could consider trying to dive at it with my drones, Beast jumped off Sadik and made a break for the safety of Mensah’s desk. Sometimes it spent more time under there than Sadik did. Mensah had taken to checking if it was there every time she went to sit down, in case she accidentally stepped on it.
“Sorry,” I told Mensah and Sadik.
“It wasn’t unpleasant,” Sadik said.
“No, it wasn’t,” Mensah agreed. “However, if it makes you uncomfortable, SecUnit, we will respect your boundaries.”
Mensah and Sadik had a moment of meaningful eye contact. I suspected they were communicating wordlessly whenever they did that but couldn’t be sure. I had never experienced mind-to-mind communication with Beast. We weren’t that close.
I thought about trying to fish Beast out from its hidey hole and risk getting my organics clawed but thought better of it. I left three drones stationed in the room—one for my human and both daemons—and left to find something better to do.
Word passed quickly between daemons. Almost as fast as it spread between gossipy humans.
When I arrived at the lab, Arlo flew from Arada’s shoulder and looped around me twice. I didn’t know birds could look disappointed, but Arada’s strawberry finch daemon somehow managed to replicate her sad face with a flutter of his wings. “Beast isn’t with you?”
“It’s still under Mensah’s desk,” I told him. Arada and Overse looked at each other and then quickly away. “Alone.”
“Of course,” Arada said quickly. “We wouldn’t assume--”
“I want to cuddle with Beast,” Arlo announced.
In my experience, daemons were always more honest than their human counterparts, who had to at least pretend to obey human niceties.
I leveled a hard stare at Arlo’s spotted feathers. “Don’t.”
Arada gently coaxed her daemon onto the bench. “Arlo, we talked about this. We have to respect SecUnit and Beast’s boundaries.”
“But what if Beast wants to cuddle?”
Varian swooped from Overse’s shoulder to land beside Arlo. Overse’s dove daemon was almost twice as large as Arada’s finch, but when he ducked down, beak skimming across Arlo’s feathers, they almost looked the same size. “I’ll cuddle with you, Arlo.”
I’d always thought daemons looked less disgusting than humans when they got touchy with each other. Daemons didn’t swap fluids and make gross kissing noises, after all. But now that I had experienced daemon-daemon touch myself, through my own feral little animal, I might have to change my mind about that.
“Sorry about him,” Arada told me. “Let’s talk about our survey. Pin-Lee sent us copies of your final contract, and it all looks good. Was there anything else you wanted to go over?”
We only managed ten minutes of discussion—me outlining security non-negotiables and Arada doing lots of nodding and note-taking—before Beast wandered into the laboratory, tail in the air.
I turned and made direct eye contact with it. Its gaze was steady and unblinking, ears angled back in a way I recognised. Oh no.
“Beast!” Arlo took to the air in a wide arc. His red wings were vibrant against the white of the lab. “We missed you.”
I should have seen it coming, but even after its behaviour the past few weeks, I didn’t think it would have the nerve.
Beast launched into the air and caught Arlo between its paws, before crashing back to the ground, Arlo thrashing in its grip. A bolt of warmth ran through my arms and chest. All the places where Beast was in physical contact with Arlo.
“Beast!” The humans and I jumped to our feet. Overse’s stool crashed to the ground, though Varian didn’t move from his perch on her shoulder. He squawked, and it sounded almost like a laugh.
Arlo wriggled out of Beast’s hold. It rolled onto its back, belly exposed, and Arlo fluttered into the air. Beast batted at him. Its paw connected, and my hand went warm, the hit too soft to hurt Arlo but enough for us all—Arlo and Beast, Arada and me—to feel it.
Arada was fighting back a smile. “It looks like they’re playing.”
“Looks like Arlo is going to lose,” Varian said with another squawk-laugh.
Murderbots don’t play. And neither do the little beasts they’re stuck with.
“Oh, don’t,” Arada said, but even her sad face wasn’t enough to stop me from kneeling down and grabbing Beast by the scruff for the second time in as many days. It hissed and tried to swipe at me, claws extended.
“It wasn’t hurting me,” Arlo said. “We were having fun!”
Arlo didn’t have the facial muscles to widen his eyes and pout like Arada did, but there was something about the way he ducked his head and tucked in his wings that hit me in the same way.
Beast was still trying to scratch at my gun ports. I hefted it higher into the air, ignored the twin sad expressions, and marched out of the room without saying anything, Beast still dangling from my hand.
iii.
I spent several cycles shut in my room on Preservation Station, watching media and ignoring messages in the feed. I had four and a half seasons of Twilight Venus left when I received a feed invite from Volescu.
The invite was to a human gathering on the planet. It seemed Volescu was using the upcoming festival as a thinly veiled excuse for a social event. (Humans loved thinly veiled excuses to throw parties. They threw parties for the most stupid things, like the planet completing another lap around the sun, as it had done unacknowledged for hundreds of millions of years. No, I didn’t understand why.)
My humans were invited too. Ratthi had already changed his status to ‘going’. I stared at the invite for another 70 seconds, long enough for Bharadwaj and Overse to also change their status from ‘invited’ to ‘going.’
Three minutes later, Mensah messaged me directly. Will you accept Volescu’s invite?
She hadn’t changed her status. I checked. Was she waiting to see if I was going before she decided?
I would be planet-side soon anyway. Mensah’s family would be at the festival, and it was going to be a security nightmare so of course I had to be there. Arriving slightly early for Volescu’s gathering wouldn’t be a big deal.
I changed my status on the invite to ‘maybe’. A moment later, Mensah updated her status to ‘going.’
I didn’t tell Beast about the gathering, but it arrived at the transport down to the planet less than 10 minutes before the set departure.
We stared at each for a long minute. Beast’s eyes were green-gold with slitted pupils. Neither of us blinked.
Misha ambled over. Ratthi, Mensah and Sadik followed close behind. The crowd parted for Sadik, as it always did. Like Sadik, I was large and intimidating, but people never leapt out of my way like that. No, I wasn’t jealous.
Misha stopped just out of arms reach. “Beast! How are you? Are you excited for the festival?”
“I’ve never been on a planet before,” Beast said.
“You’re not missing out,” I told it. “Planets suck.”
Ratthi laughed. “You don’t have the best track record with planets, do you?”
“Preservation is beautiful,” Mensah said, “and much safer than our survey. Is there anything you’re looking forward to while being on planet, Beast?”
Beast thought about this. “I want to know what grass feels like.”
There was an awkward pause as we all processed that. Preservation Station had plenty of bio-domes with large leafy plants, but it didn’t have stretches of grass the same way a planet does. It wasn’t something I had thought of before.
When I had been stationed on planets in the past, I had been more likely to come across sand, or mud, or overgrown shrubbery that humans needed someone to wade through and make a path. Not grass.
I recovered faster than the humans. “How did you know our departure time?”
“I overheard Indah talking about how grateful she was that you were gonna be off-station.”
“Fuck off.” Not that Indah wouldn’t have been happy to have me as far away as possible, but she didn’t seem the type to voice that thought in a public place, especially given my drones and roaming daemon could easily overhear her.
“I told it,” Ratthi admitted, holding his hands up, like he was showing me he was unarmed. “What? An invite for you is an invite for Beast.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, and I didn’t want to acknowledge Mensah staring hard at my shoulder. I pretended not to notice. It fooled exactly no one.
It was a long journey down to the planet. Most daemons sat in their human’s lap, aside from the few that were large enough to need their own seats, like Sadik. Thankfully, the transport was empty enough that Beast could snag its own seat, and I didn’t have to worry about coaxing it onto my lap. (Or, more likely, worrying about it trying to squish into the seat with Sadik).
I spent the trip watching episode 49 of Worldhoppers. It was the episode where the crew were rescued after spending three weeks of in-universe time stranded in a safepod. It was one of ART’s favourite episodes, and I didn’t mind it either.
My favourite scene was when the crew received the ping from the rescue team, and realised they hadn’t been abandoned after all. After a long journey back through the wormhole (compressed into a tidy montage), the crew returned to their home system. When they landed, they stumbled out of the airlock. The music swelled. Uhura, ART’s favourite character, sank to her knees and pressed her fingers into the earth. She was crying.
The grass looked soft.
I rewatched the episode twice before we landed on Preservation’s surface. The rescue scene was still my favourite, but the return home made me feel an emotion I had never felt when watching it before.
Volescu’s home was surrounded by woodland. Towering trees grew in all directions, creating a natural barrier against noise and light, and thickets of wildflowers dotted the property.
I don’t like planets. But I had to admit some were better than others.
All the doors in Volescu’s cabin were flung open in preparation for the human gathering. Party. Whatever. There were more people here than I had expected. Many of them were family members of my humans (Volescu’s and Mensah’s were massively over-represented in the guest list), but there were plenty of humans I had never met. And had no desire to.
When we arrived, I followed Mensah to greet Volescu and his three life-partners. I’d met them before, but it had been a while. They didn’t hug me the same way they hugged Mensah, but the way they lit up when they saw me (and then thanked me again for saving Voelscu’s life, even though they’d already done that when we first met) made me turn on my heel so I could have an emotion in private.
I found a tire swing a short walk from the house. When I sat down, it swung in a lazy circle.
I had left six drones in various points around the house. One hovered directly above Gurathin, Ratthi, and Volescu’s conversation out on the deck.
“I’m glad SecUnit came,” Volescu said. “I’m sad to say I haven’t had as much time to visit the station since my granddaughter was born.”
Gurathin snorted, hiding his smile behind his wine glass. “And then it immediately left to go watch Sanctuary Moon in your garden.”
My drone swooped down and bonked into his glass with a soft clank. His daemon, a shoebill stork almost as tall as Gurathin, clacked its bill in a noise like rapid gunfire. I was so used to the noise that I didn’t need my Daemon-Behaviour.Decode.File to tell me it was greeting me.
“I think SecUnit’s trying to tell you you’re wrong,” Ratthi said. On his shoulder, Misha batted at the drone. The drone weaved playfully back and forth in front of her, making her laugh. “I’m pretty sure it was busy watching Twilight Venus last time I saw it.”
They were both wrong. I wasn’t watching any media at all. I could have watched something while still monitoring my drone inputs. But I didn’t.
The night was clear and still. Beast had disappeared soon after we arrived at Volescu’s house, but I could feel its presence somewhere on the property, its existence a flicker somewhere deep in my organics that I tried not to notice most of the time.
When I stood from the tire swing, I knelt and threaded my fingers through the overgrown grass. It was soft, in a scratchy way, and the soil beneath was cool and damp. Nothing worth crying over, I thought.
I saved the feeling to show ART if we ever crossed paths again.
iv.
Mensah’s family didn’t know how to act around me.
That didn’t extend to Beast.
Beast could often be found with the youngest members of the Mensah family. The children’s daemons were still able to shift forms. Beast, who had also been able to shift until only a few weeks ago, had more patience for their ever-changing bodies in a way the older daemons didn’t. It could often be seen darting between the smallest daemons, easily keeping up with every hopping, flying, slithering form they shifted into.
I became used to the tingling warmth in my hands and legs as Beast herded the children’s daemons. The first time I felt the gold-glow in my mouth, I dropped two whole points of performance reliability. But my drone captured the youngest Mensah’s daemon shifting from songbird to sugar glider midair and failing to catch themself with the membrane stretching between their limbs. They plummeted. Before the sugar glider could hit the ground, Beast leapt and caught them in its mouth. It had been an almost seven foot vertical jump.
The adults on the porch had seen the save. After the adults verified the child and daemon were okay, they started clapping. It wasn’t a sound I heard outside of live performances and it took me a while to figure out why they were doing it. When I did, my performance reliability dropped further.
Beast stood tall, tail straight and slightly curled at the tip. It was soaking in the attention. Like a circus animal trained to perform tricks.
I didn’t want to interact with the Mensah family anymore than I needed to for security purposes, but watching them warm to Beast so quickly—as though it were an easy thing to be around, to like—made my organics squirm.
We came from the same soul, humans insisted. Beast was me and I was Beast, but this was clearly proof that we couldn’t be more different.
When Beast wasn’t entertaining the humans, it slunk away the same way it did on Preservation Station. The planet was many times bigger than the station, and there were more chances for it to disappear. I thought about sending my drones to keep an eye on it, but then decided I didn’t care what trouble it got into, so long as it didn’t drag my humans into it.
On a sunny day after the festival, it disappeared again. Some of the children and their daemons asked after it, but accepted Mensah’s explanation that Beast needed space sometimes. But even Mensah started to get worried around the thirty-six hour mark.
She slipped out of bed midway through the rest circle. I knew she hadn’t been sleeping well recently, but she usually tried to pretend. When she crept out of the house and down a dimly lit path, my drone bobbed along behind her.
She found Beast curled between the roots of a tree, half-obscured by overgrown grass. A human wouldn’t have seen it if they weren’t actively looking for it.
Its eyes opened, shining reflective in the moonlight. It blinked slowly up at Mensah.
“Hello, Beast,” Mensah murmured. “Were you sleeping?”
“No,” Beast said, just as soft.
“The children were asking about you.” Beast raised its head, suddenly more alert. “They’re all okay. Everyone is okay.”
Beast lowered its head back to its paws. Mensah sat against the trunk a hand length away from it. Sadik laid beside her, his head in her lap, angled so he could look at Beast in his periphery. Mensah combed her fingers through Sadik’s mane.
Now that the festival had ended, the night was quiet, save for the soft hum of crickets and wind blowing through tall grass. This had been the most relaxed I had seen Mensah in some time.
“I’m going to miss you when you go on survey,” Mensah said. “You and SecUnit both.”
Beast sniffed. “You’re going to be too busy with your trauma modules.”
Mensah laughed, sinking further against the tree trunk. “Yes, don’t worry. I remember my promise to SecUnit. I’ll complete the trauma modules.”
“Good.” Silence lapsed again. I was worried Mensah would fall asleep out here—human spines don’t cope well with sleeping sitting upright—but just when I was thinking about coming to collect her, Sadik shifted on her lap. He extended a paw.
Beast’s paw was several times smaller than Sadik’s. ART had teased it once about choosing a much smaller, less threatening version of Sadik to settle into. Beast had become so annoyed it clawed at the upholstery in ART’s crew lounge, until ART sent a drone to shoo it away.
Beast reached and Sadik met it in the middle. They didn’t have fingers to interlace, but the touch created the same warm melty feeling in me when Mensah and I held hands.
I couldn’t bring myself to come and get Mensah. She ended up falling asleep propped against the tree, warmed by Sadik’s weight, and only woke when the sun rose above the horizon 3.8 hours later.
v.
The first thing most daemons see are their humans, pink and screaming as they enter the world.
But I am not most daemons, and the first face I saw wasn’t yours. It was Dr. Mensah’s.
There may have been other faces before that. My memories of the time before Mensah saved me from my container are murky. If there had been technicians that first locked me inside my cage, I don’t remember them.
I will never forget Dr. Mensah. Sometimes, I think her face is more familiar to me than yours.
She smiles when she looks at me. Sometimes, she purses her lips and shakes her head, the same silent Don’t even think about it that she gives her younger children before they do something ill-advised. It’s embarrassing, but that face works as well on me as it does on the little ones. But usually, when she looks down at me, Dr. Mensah is smiling.
She wasn’t smiling the first time she saw me.
The first time my casing was opened, the first time my eyes ever learnt to take in light, I saw a face twisted up in revulsion. She almost dropped me.
(I didn’t know it was revulsion at the time. Human emotions are harder to read than daemons’, and I had no experience with either. The faces that followed immediately after—Sadik’s, then Pin-lee’s, and Bharadwaj’s, and finally yours—all bore similar wrinkled expressions. When we left, I discovered media by watching it over your shoulder. It became easier to read facial expressions after seeing the wide variety of emotions reflected back at me from the displays.)
“Oh,” Mensah said, adjusting her hold on my container. “Oh, what have they done to you?”
No one had spoken to me before. The container wasn’t soundproof, but noise had been vague and far-off, never directed towards me. I didn’t know how to respond.
She didn’t put my lid back on. She settled me down on a surface. Her face was replaced by Sadik’s, and he spoke to me for—I don’t know how long. A small eternity. He didn’t expect me to answer, and I didn’t understand everything he said, but his voice was a low rumble that landed somewhere deep inside me.
He stayed with me until you came.
The lid stayed off until you, finally, put it back on.