Noise.

She even said it with the same reverent tone of hesitant fear I knew I had adopted when talking about that haunting phenomenon. It almost seemed like she spoke of it like she knew what it was, like she remembered the pain I'd suffered so long ago and had been able to place it in her own experience. Like she'd seen a glimpse into the same hell with which I'd been so intimately familiar and identified it as if she'd known it as intimately as me.

Or maybe she was just delusional and mumbling nonsense between the shock of what she'd just experienced and the powerful sedative she'd just been injected with.

I finally blinked, coming back to my senses as Doc snapped his fingers in front of my eyes. "Meryll. Meryll, talk to me," he said urgently.

I shook my head and pulled myself back together again, looking down to see that my sister had passed out from the potent drugs, her chest rising gently as they stabilized her, shielding her from the madness she'd briefly dipped her toes into.

"Uh... S-Sorry," I muttered, gently placing Lily's hand down at her side. He stared at me for a moment. Reading me. He was going to insist on an explanation. "She just said some...thing that caught me off guard, th-that's all. Really."

He kept his eyes on me for another moment, then sighed. "That was a lot for her to go through. Whatever she said, she didn't mean it, Meryll." He must not have heard her, focused as he was on administering whatever it was that he'd put into her. "Knowing her, she'll apologize like crazy once she's up. She did consent to this, foolish as it was."

I nodded. "Yeah... At least she h-had a good day before this." I gently ran my hand over her leg as I stepped forward along the bed, hoping she was feeling better in her sleep now. I certainly hoped she didn't share my nightmares.

"This... experiment you're doing with her..." He started while he untied the straps from around her, then let out a frustrated grunt before he continued sternly, "You're going to keep me involved, do you understand? You will not do this without medical supervision until we can establish a regular, safe approach, which this was most certainly not. Anything you do with this, it happens here, in this room, with Lily on these beds and in my presence."

I nodded enthusiastically. "No, I und...ers-stand. I agree. Th-This is serious."

"Right. Good." Doc sounded like he was surprised to hear that from me. I think he'd expected me to be defiant and reckless, curious as I was to see where this went, but Lily was my sister, and seeing her like that hammered home just how important this would be to do carefully. We were playing with her well-being, and while I did have a tendency toward reckless disregard for myself, I would do anything to keep Lily safe.

I stared down at her from the end of the bed. "I didn't... b-break her, did I?" I asked quietly.

"She's stabilizing," Doc said, finally turning away from the vitals monitor. "The sedative calmed her heart rate down, and her brain activity is normalizing too. I don't think there was any neurological damage, but she's definitely going to be shaken when she wakes up. Hopefully she calls this whole thing off, but if she's anything like you, she won't."

"She needs to be who...le again, Doc," I insisted. "I thought m-maybe she was diff...erent because of what h-happened to her, but it's part of her. She's a c-core. She needs this."

Doc drew in a deep breath. "I guess I can't exactly claim to understand. A core has certainly never had the capacity to express what it means, psychologically, to be one before, and if you say that it's that important, I have to take your word on it. But still, we're going to do this slowly."

—

"Well, I can't say I'll know what sort of situation we'll be in then..." Aisling pondered out loud from behind her desk at the helm. "But if we're in shape for it at the time, she's the only one who can direct us to it, and it's in wild space, then I guess I don't see a reason we couldn't swing by."

I smiled back at her. As much as I knew what needed to be done for Lily's sake at this point, Theseus was still rightfully Aisling's ship, and we had to get the go-ahead from her to make toward a planned destination. I was glad that she was amenable to our cause. I supposed it wasn't exactly a difficult ask, though. We had weeks of travel time with nothing else between there anyway, and we weren't exactly going to be on a schedule if all things went to plan.

"From what you tell me, though, she seems very convinced that we will make it through on Europa. Has she said anything else about potential futures there?"

I shook my head "N-No. She's been really quiet a-about her visions, ac...tually. More than u-usual." I thought about it for a moment. "C-Come to think of it, all she's said so f-far is that the whole c-crew will survive."

Aisling nodded. "That's all she's explicitly said, yes. But reading between the lines, it's also obvious that she's seen us undergoing this mission, not abandoning it. I'm not sure what to think of that." She let out a quiet grumble and leaned forward on her desk, cupping her chin in her hand. "You know, when we brought an actual precognitive psychic on-board, I sort of assumed that things would be easier to determine ahead of time, not more cryptic."

"Yeah..." I looked out the front window, looking over the port below. Early on, it seemed like it might work that way. Lily had shared a lot more with us, telling us events major and minor that were to come in our little adventures here in this budding colony.

But then things wouldn't go exactly as foreseen, or there were consequences that hadn't been clear for her. Nothing disastrous had come of it, but there were close calls. She began to piece together how knowledge of the future affected causality and she became more guarded, more deliberate with sharing little hints and pieces of information rather than the whole truth. Directing us without informing us. It felt like we were still at the whims of fate, but gently guided by a benevolent hand rather than simply told what would be. It made me wonder what our current situation would be if Lily didn't have her gift.

"Hey." I snapped back to reality, turning back to Aisling. I'd zoned out. "How's the concussion?"

Right. With all the excitement recently, I had nearly forgotten that it was less than a week ago I'd been shellshocked. Maybe that was why I'd been more easily distracted than usual. "D-Doc says I'm fine. Maybe st...still feeling a little... spacey."

"You're gonna be good to go, though, right?" She asked enthusiastically, just a hint of concern in her voice.

I nodded back at her. "Yeah, of c-course! I wanna go back to Luna and s-start my normal l-life of piracy already," I joked.

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She scoffed. "Yeah, just the day to day adventures of getting shot at and fighting for our piece of the pot, right?" She turned to the side and started navigating the comms terminal. "I'll make sure to stock up on the supplies we'll need to do field repairs on... whatever her ship's going to be called. I can't promise we'll be able to get it up to top form again without getting it to a dry dock, but Mouse can probably patch it together to be functional. He somehow kept you together after exploding the whole front end, so I'm sure he's up to it."

I hadn't thought to ask what Lily's ship was called. She'd probably never even considered it. The most the prototype had from Foundation was likely an impersonal serial number, and I knew that wouldn't do. I'd have to remember to bring it up to her when she was awake again. "Thanks c-captain."

"Hey, she might have tried to kill us," she started with a groan, still looking away from me at the screen, "and I might gripe sometimes about how opaque she can be, but she's helped us. A lot. I don't know if we'd be in as good a shape as we are right now without her help. She's been very valuable, and she's family to my crew. The good kind of family. The kind that's bonded by more than blood. I'll gladly take care of her."

"And she'll stay a val...uable asset if you keep on her good s-side?" I asked playfully. I knew Aisiling had a pragmatic approach to relationships at best, and she would be looking for the angle that benefited her. I was fine with it, since she at least had a conscience about those she was close to.

Aisling scoffed. "There's nothing wrong with reaping the material benefits of friendship now and then." She turned back to me, a message about more ship construction supplies having been sent to a supplier in the area. "Besides, I doubt she's going anywhere. You two are inseparable. Not that I blame you, after all that."

She wasn't wrong. Lily may as well have been considered part of the crew at this point. I wasn't going to abandon her, and I wasn't sure if she could psychologically handle being out on her own, especially once we got to Luna. She didn't exactly have the constitution to operate in the criminal underworld, foresight or not. I could maybe see her establishing a legitimate business there if we gave her something to start with, though. Maybe she'd have a nice little cafe of her own.

"So Meryll." I'd zoned out again, imagining a distant future where Lily had settled down into a more domestic life at the center of anarchy. I focused in on Aisling, determined to keep my attention there. "You and Ray. How's that going?"

Amazing. Validating. Best thing that's ever happened to me after grafting Theseus. "It's... pretty gr-great." I smiled wide, avoiding her gaze because I knew I must have been blushing.

"Like I said, I have no problem with it or anything, just checking in." She was smiling wide at me, probably enjoying me getting flustered over this. "I'm happy for you two." Her tone became a bit more somber after that. "I just want you to know, though... if the Europa op goes ahead, she'll be on the away team. You know the risks involved with that."

That actually did surprise me. "She's... going in w-with you? What about th-the whole..."

"Mammon thing? We're doing this covert. If things go as planned, she won't be seen. None of us will. If things go to shit, we'll stand the best chance if she's there, and we won't be sticking around long enough to deal with the consequences."

"I guess...? But I m-mean... she's not exactly... s-subtle."

Aisling chuckled. "She snuck up on Skygraves' crew. Look, you'd be surprised how easy it is to hide for someone half-covered in black fur."

I couldn't help but imagine Ray, in all her massive muscular glory, curled up in a dark alleyway. She'd be sprawled across the ground on all fours to keep a low profile, lurking in the dark, coiled like a spring, ready to pounce on some guard with her claws bared if they took the wrong turn...

Why did that turn me on?

I shook my head clear and then nodded quickly to correct myself. "O-Okay, I kinda see it. I mean, I-I trust you all. It's n-not like it'll be that much safer with me."

Aisling seemed satisfied with that. "Appropriate risk management. Not reckless momentary decision-making.That's all it is," she reiterated her point. I'd be a little annoyed that she was trying so hard to hammer that home if she weren't right. "This gives us all the best chance of making it home with a massive payday, and maybe a little bit of leverage to keep them from dropping an armada on us again. And if things do go south, we get out as quick as we can, no detours. We're on offense this time. We aren't desperate like we were on Venus, so no wild card plays."

I shrugged my shoulders. "I mean... un...less we have to?"

She rolled her eyes. "If things have gone that bad, I'll let you know. Then you can pull out whatever awful idea you have."

I was glad that she trusted me in a pinch, at least. It seemed to be where I operated best. If we had nothing else to lose, I knew I could come up with something as awful as she was thinking. I smirked at her. "It's a d-deal. I'll foll...ow your lead until s-something stupid has to happ...en."

She laughed. "Well said. Oh, one more thing. This thing with Lily's vision. 'Not needing your implant' or whatever she let slip... where are we on that?"

"Well..." I mumbled. I didn't see any reason not to keep her informed on the subject. Aisling operated best when she had as much information as possible. "While Li...ly has been closed about it, and I d-don't intend to push her any fur-further, I did find out someth...ing interesting from A-Agatha. Apparently, anything I interf...faced with on Venus is dis...displaying signs of heavily c-corrupted code on a deep s-system level."

Aisling's eyes shot open and she leaned forward again, her attention rapt. "You're... leaving behind some kind of virus?" She asked seriously.

"Some...th-thing like that. The things I've in-interfaced with recently and conti...nuously don't s-seem to be having any sort of prob...lems, and it took m-months before this started hap-happening. We're still trying to put it a-all together. Something te-tells me it's connec...ted to that, though. I even f-found the same type of corruption in o-one of Isabelle's files. We usually use c-comms connections, so I-I don't inter...face with her directly that often. It h-had been a few months..."

"That's... alarming. And intriguing." Aisling muttered to herself, sitting back up and looking down at her desk, her brow furrowed. "This could be very serious, Meryll. How much of this colony have you interfaced with?"

I cringed, already knowing I'd fucked up there. I clenched my jaw as I muttered, "About... e-eighty-five percent... ish?" I was guessing, but that number seemed like a good rough estimate.

"Fuck," Aisling mumbled. "Place is gonna be crippled."

"I-I didn't know un...til now, I swear!" I put my hands up in front of me defensively. "An-And it doesn't ha...ppen all at once a-anyway. Th-Things will stop wor...king one b-by one, and th-they'll have time to re...place them."

"The corpos, sure. But the civilians..." Aisling mumbled. She looked up at me and her expression fell slightly. She could tell I was upset too. "It's hardly your fault, Meryll. And there's not much we can do about it without showing our hand. But now that we know, maybe be a little more selective with how you interact with things from now on."

I nodded "A-Already planned on it. Anything else I should know?"

"Umm... I m-might not actually be coding a-at all."

"What?" Now she just looked confused. I didn't blame her, I was too.

"W-Well, Agatha looked a-at my source code. For the personal sc-scripts I use to run things in my n-network... it's n-not any language she knows. She s-says it doesn't even make syn-syntactical sense. I-I don't know how it w-works, but it does. I... might not be doing what an...yone would consider coding a-at all. We're work...ing on it."

Aisling just stared at me with a bewildered expression for a very long moment, trying to make sense of what she'd just heard. "Meryll, what the fuck," was what she eventually landed on. "What the actual fuck are you?"

I shrugged my shoulders and sighed. "I still have... n-no idea. You w-wanted to know."

She nodded slowly. "I guess I did ask for that. Still, what the fuck?" She repeated, "So what, you just... You know what, no. I'm not even going to try to wrap my head around this right now. I have enough to worry about. I'll leave the crazy-ass psychic science to you, Doc, and that girl on Venus I guess. Let me know when you've figured this out."

I nodded quickly. "I'll l-leave you to that. Log...istics and s-such." I said quietly as I made my way toward the door while she held her forehead, the headache I'd given her pretty obvious.

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