Chapter 39 - Holding Patterns

  Darius blinked awake, shaking off a half-remembered dream of… coding? Clearly, he’d been spending too much time thinking about Echo’s frame if it was starting to impinge on his sleep.

  Rolling out of bed and absently completing his morning ablutions only took a couple of minutes, and then he was moving out into the kitchen for breakfast. In the couple of days since the meeting with the other cell, things had settled into a tense but anticipatory holding pattern.

  Corin and Tarek were often gone from the safehouse, doing who-knows-what in preparation for the raid. Harlan had taken to pouring over the rendered model of the garrison for hours at a time, muttering to himself and making notes on a dataslate.

  Darius was half tempted to ask Echo to hack into the dataslate and tell him what the older man was working on, but the knowledge that it would likely bore him to tears was enough to stop him.

  It hadn’t escaped his notice how there was always at least one member of the Freeholders in the safehouse with him, and usually at least one in whichever room he happened to be in. He was trying not to take it personally, but the feeling of someone breathing down his neck was hard to shake.

  It was like when you were walking down the street, and an Imperial patrol started following you. Consciously, you might know that it was a coincidence, that they just happened to be moving in the same direction, but unconsciously, you couldn’t help but feel like they were watching you specifically.

  Darius might know that he didn’t have anything to hide and that the Freeholders could watch him all they liked, but it somehow felt like he was keeping a big secret – another big secret, really – and they were going to find it out.

  It… may have led to him becoming increasingly snappish, but that was neither here nor there.

  The table was quiet, save for the faint scrape of utensils and the occasional clink of a cup settling on the rough, dented surface. Darius pushed a spoon through his breakfast, not really eating so much as prodding at it. Across from him, Lena and Corin sat in silence, each working through their own meals. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, an uncomfortable silence. It also, notably, wasn’t comfortable either.

  Each person sat there with their own thoughts, and Darius found himself missing the banter they’d shared from before his secret had come out. Even when they’d all been sick of being cooped up in the safehouse while waiting for the chop-doc to come, there had still been some chatter. Hard-edged, maybe, and more likely a pointed attempt to vent some frustrations, but it had been something.

  Maybe this was for the best. If nothing else, it was more… honest. And it wasn’t like he was planning on sticking around for long once he’d retrieved the processor cores.

  Suddenly seized with the urge to leave the suffocating silence, Darius scooped up his plate without a word and headed for the living room where Echo’s frame still stood. Neither Corin nor Lena said anything. He didn’t look back as he left.

  – – –

  The frame was standing in the centre of the living room, just where he’d left it. Not that he expected it to have moved, of course – without the processor core it was still useless. Nevertheless, there was something calming about its presence, almost like there was another person in the room.

  One that wasn’t suspicious of him.

  Absently, he grabbed one of his precision screwdrivers and sat himself down by the frame, starting to fiddle with a knee joint. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was something to do, something to occupy his hands while his mind churned.

  Darius knew that he had changed. There were the obvious ways – he was sitting on the floor of a safehouse next to a robotic frame he had essentially built from scratch, hunted by the Empire. But there was also… something else. Something less tangible.

  Something he didn’t want to think about, had successfully avoided thinking about, even, before Finn had pointed it out to him. But even before that, it had been getting harder and harder to avoid noticing.

  Even now, the way he had picked up a tool and started working on the knee joint – that wasn’t like him. Normally, when he was bored, he would sit in front of the TV screen in his apartment and start wasting away while watching whatever brain rot was showing.

  The tools felt comfortable in his hands in a way they hadn’t before. He moved through the motions of disassembling and reassembling the joint without really thinking about it, hands steady, mind detached. It wasn’t instinct, not exactly, but it was close.

  He paused, staring down at the joint in his hands, now fully disassembled into its component pieces. Each small part was perfectly arranged in a neat line on the floor. When had he done that? He couldn’t quite remember making the conscious decision to take it apart so precisely. His stomach twisted, and he shoved the thought away.

  But it wouldn’t go, not so easily.

  “Am I… am I still me?” Darius asked aloud, the words torn from him before he could stop them. There was only one person he could be talking to, but Echo didn’t respond for several long moments.

  {I… believe so, yes.} the AI said eventually, and the uncertainty in its voice was alarming.

  “You don’t know?”

  {I don’t know who you were before we met.} Echo said simply. {It is difficult to know how much you have changed. Even more so because change is natural, part of being alive. Even without my… influence, the events of the last few weeks would have changed you. To what extent…}

  Echo trailed off, and Darius could somehow feel that the unknowns of the situation were playing on its mind just as much as they were on his. He didn’t know how long these feelings had been happening, either. Echo had been getting steadily better at imitating emotions and displaying the subtleties of conversation, but how much of that was the AI getting better, and how much was Darius simply understanding more…

  Well. There was a lot of uncertainty and frustration to go around.

  “To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know who I was either,” Darius admitted, unusually vulnerable. “I wasn’t really doing anything with my life, just drifting by, day to day. When I was younger, I remember dreaming of what I wanted to be when I grew up, but then it actually happened, and I just… gave up, I guess.”

  {I… I can’t say that I know your history completely, but from what I understand, your brother’s death was a significant disruption. It is not unusual to feel… lost.}

  Stolen story; please report.

  Darius snorted. Echo really was trying to play therapist for him. “Yeah, I know all that. It was years ago, and while it’s not exactly the kind of thing you just ‘get over’, it’s an… old hurt now. Marcus’s death… it’s a done deal. That wasn’t the thing holding me back – and I guess that’s the problem; there was nothing holding me back. Why did I collapse so badly, then?”

  {In fairness, I believe you may be judging yourself by unreasonable standards. While it’s true that you were not exactly a ‘high achiever’, you also had steady, paying work, you could afford the necessities, and, had you been better at saving, you could have afforded some luxuries. Many people would consider that a successful life.}

  Darius sighed, considering. “I guess… I guess you’re right. I just always thought I would be more, you know? Really make something of myself. Like Lyra has, actually.”

  {You don’t often speak about your family.} Echo observed.

  Darius allowed himself to slump back until he was lying outstretched on the floor beside where the frame was standing, deliberately ignoring how he had somehow reassembled the knee joint without even realising.

  “No, I don’t,” he agreed. “Lyra and I… it’s complicated. I guess, at the core of it, we’re just too similar. When Marcus died, the Empire wasn’t happy to let things lie. They came looking, wanting to see if his family were ‘accomplices’. And they weren’t too bothered about whether we actually were involved or not. Guess it would have made them look better, to be able to point to our family and say ‘we caught the terrorists’, or whatever.”

  Darius swallowed. It was years ago, but he could still remember it like it was yesterday. The door, slamming open without warning, Imperial enforcers pouring into the house with military precision. The way his family had huddled on the couch as their life was turned upside down, as an Imperial officer barked questions at them.

  The way they had learned about Marcus’s death, delivered with deliberate detachment, using the shock of it to break the family’s composure.

  When it was over, the house was left in shambles, and the family was dragged to a holding cell to spend the night under watch. Darius saw through the act—they hadn’t been taken for any real suspicion of wrongdoing. The Empire wanted a scapegoat, someone to hold accountable, and they were grasping at straws. It was clear that if someone didn’t act, they wouldn’t be walking free.

  So Darius made the only choice he could.

  “I… took the fall,” he continued, thankful that Echo hadn’t interrupted his recollection. “Lyra didn’t agree. She was younger than I was, a little more sheltered. Or maybe a little more positive, I don’t know. Either way, she was certain that the Empire would be fair. That they would see they had made a mistake, that we were innocent. I don’t know if she was clinging to hope after learning Marcus was dead – we both looked up to him – or if she actually believed it, but either way, she didn’t take my ‘admission’ very well. Told me I was making things worse, that I was proving them right.”

  He dragged a hand down his face, suddenly tired for all that it was morning. “It was years before we reconciled. To her credit, she kept in contact while I was in prison. Called every couple of months, even if it was only for a few minutes. But it was never the same.”

  Darius shook his head, suddenly realising he had gotten side-tracked. “Anyway, the point is that while I was in prison, Lyra was busy excelling. I don’t know if she was just trying to ‘wipe the stain from the family name’ or what, but she threw herself into work and just kept getting promoted. She’s… always been aiming for something, had a goal to work towards. I guess I just… never expected to be the layabout of the family.”

  {For what it’s worth, there’s no one I would rather be sharing a head with.} Echo said loyally, if not totally honestly.

  Darius snorted. “Thanks, buddy. You’re not bad yourself.”

  There was a beat of silence before Echo pressed, curious. {What about your parents? How did they take your actions?}

  “…Welp, I guess I can’t be sitting about all day,” Darius said, pointedly avoiding the question. “What do you think, should we drag this thing into our room?” he asked, looking the frame up and down.

  Thankfully, Echo was aware enough to drop the topic. {It may reduce tension with the Freeholders, at least. Would you like me to direct it?}

  Darius blinked, looking up from where he had been examining the frame and wondering if dragging it across the floor would damage anything. He glanced around the room quickly before responding in a hushed voice. “Sorry, what? Can you… is this thing able to move?”

  {It is not fully functional, no, but the only thing missing is the processor core,} Echo said, apparently surprised. {It has power, and all the servos are connected. Why would it not be able to move?}

  “I don’t know, I thought you needed to be driving it!” Darius hissed.

  {I would be ‘driving it’, as you put it. Just… remotely.}

  That… actually kind of made sense. Darius supposed that he had been treating the frame more like a body than it actually was. At the end of the day, it was just a machine, and of course machines could be operated remotely. Although…

  “Wait, then how come you said you can’t get into the security systems remotely? It can’t be more complicated than piloting an entire body.”

  {The difficulty does not lie in connecting with the Imperial security systems; the difficulty is in getting through their encryption, in which I am limited largely by bandwidth. While integrated with you, I have limited space to ‘spread out’, so to speak, which means many of my processers are limited in turn. A physical connection means I can directly interface with the system, which bypasses the issue.}

  “So… you can use the frame because it’s not encrypted, but if it did have encryption, you wouldn’t be able to?”

  {Exactly.}

  “Does that mean any random person could also use it?” Darius asked.

  {Theoretically, yes, though the system architecture would be foreign, and they would need to know what they are controlling in the first place. It is unlikely.}

  “Right,” Darius muttered, only partially comforted. “Anyway, I think we should move this the old-fashioned way,” he continued, making sure to keep his voice lowered. “You being able to control it could be a useful ace up our sleeve in case the Freeholders get cold feet once we’ve got that core.”

  {As you wish. In that case, you may wish to ask for help. The frame is… not light.}

  Darius scoffed at Echo’s lack of belief in his physical prowess, strutting up to the frame confidently. “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

  A few minutes later, he sheepishly asked Corin for a hand.

  – – –

  Days passed in a holding pattern. Darius spent hours poring over the schematics Echo had generated for the frame. The work wasn’t necessary anymore—the frame was finished—but it kept his mind occupied. He realised with some discomfort how quickly he was learning the intricacies of the designs, able to visualise entire systems without checking the schematics. It was another reminder of the changes taking root, ones he couldn’t stop or fully understand.

  The Freeholders began to loosen their guard around him, though not by much. Tarek seemed oddly satisfied to have someone to openly scowl at, while Corin’s demeanour remained unbothered as if nothing had changed.

  Darius wondered if he’d ever seen the man actually show a genuine reaction to something. Lena, though, had grown distant. It wasn’t overt, but the shift felt sharper, heavier, and Darius added it to the growing list of things he avoided thinking about.

  The group’s tacit acceptance allowed him limited trips outside the safehouse. Always under supervision, but it was a welcome change. He visited a new bar, one far from the one where Veya had found him, and spent time at a shooting range. His aim started off shaky, but the targeting overlay Echo provided made it manageable. Even Tarek, grudgingly, noted his improvement.

  Natural talent or Echo’s influence? Darius wasn’t sure anymore. He only hoped some of it stayed after the AI was gone.

  If that ever happened.

  What was undeniable was how much of Darius’s routine now revolved around preparation—both his own and the Freeholders’. Harlan had started briefing them in small groups, short, tense sessions where every moment of the garrison plan was picked apart. The rooms were filled with sharp smells of stale coffee and overheated dataslates. Maps and scrawled notes spilled across every flat surface, each annotated with a mix of military precision and the hurried scrawl of those working under pressure.

  Darius caught snippets of their talk—patrol schedules, turret placements, blind spots in the external sensors—but mostly kept his head down. It was enough to know they’d thought this through. He didn’t want to make himself a bigger part of the plan than he already was.

  It didn’t stop his stomach from twisting at the casual way they mentioned ‘dealing with’ the guards or the way they talked about taking extra ammunition, just in case. He was just thankful they didn’t seem to expect him to take part.

  He wasn’t sure if that made him any better, standing by while others fought, but it was something. He also wasn’t blind to the fact that things rarely went to plan, and there was an extra weapon set aside for him.

  He managed to talk to Finn again, somewhere in between the preparations. A few stolen minutes weren’t much, but his friend was able to let him know that he had a couple of potential ships in mind that would get him off-planet. He tried not to think about how he might have to use the weapon set aside for him on an innocent, all for his own sake.

  He was trying not to think about quite a lot now.

  And then, before he knew it, the time for thinking was over.