Alone.

The word disrupts the still pool that is Gemmi's mind, sending ripples of awareness through her body. Her limbs twitch, and her eyes flutter, but then she is still once more.

Scared. Don't want to be alone.

This time, the words are accompanied by a jolt of pain that radiates from the back of her neck, downward and outward until it sears through her fingers and toes. She screams first in pain and then in horror at the sight which greets her half-focused eyes.

She should be used to inactive bioloids by now, of course, but she still finds them a bit disturbing under the best of circumstances. To wake next to one, to feel its cold flesh against hers, is enough to make her stomach knot. She props herself up on one arm, her head reeling too badly for her to stand, and studies Talyn's frozen face. His eyes are wide, his lips parted, and his eyebrows drawn together, as if he had been protesting something at the moment he became inactive.

"Oh, Mina, what have you done?" she wonders out loud.

Not me!

She isn't sure if she believes Mina's answer, and the idea of being lied to frightens her more than either being stunned unconscious or shocked awake. Her hand drifts to the back of her neck, and she fingers the transponder. What would Mina do if she removed it? Closing her eyes, she calls out for Bialar, hoping to ask his advice on dealing with wayward Leviathan hybrids, but her connection with him has gone dead. Mina must have damaged it with either her stun blast or her awakening jolt.

Not me, Mina repeats.

"Can I-- can I talk to Ceredin? Through the comms, I mean."

"Oh, of course you can talk to me!" The voice that pours through the speaker has a note of fond exasperation that takes some of the tightness from Gemmi's chest. "You didn't think she would remove me, did you?"

"Ah, yes, well, after seeing Talyn like this..." she gestures to the still face beside her and then begins fumbling for his reset switch. Once she has found it, she sits up and slides her legs under his head, leaning over him so that he will at least see a familiar-- and functioning!-- face when he wakes.

"Hm. You have Bialar to blame for that. Mina wouldn't lie to you, you know."

Gemmi shurgs. "I don't know what she wouldn't do to me, but I'm getting an idea what she would."

"Whatever it takes to keep you here and safe, that's what she'll do. A pilot isn't supposed to leave her Leviathan."

"Isn't supposed... to leave?" Gemmi leans back against the wall and covers her face with her hands. "Why me, Cer? Why do I always do this? First the Scarran research station, which was a glorified work camp, then Bialar, who is, well, you know him, and now Mina wants to put me in a frelling cage?"

"Hm. Clearly a flaw in your code. How's Talyn?"

"He's initializing." Gemmi's hand flutters to the datachips she wears around her neck as Talyn's eyelids begin to twitch. She fingers the chip, reminding herself that she has backups of Talyn, Ceredin, and Bialar. She leans forward again, smooths his hair out of his face, and forces herself to smile for him.

The first words out of Talyn's mouth as he meets Gemmi's eyes are, "Frell, that hurt!"

"I-- I'm sorry--" she begins.

"Not you!" Talyn shakes his head and sits up. "It was the frelling DRD, got me with one of Mina's stun weapons. Bialar's idea, but Cer was in on it."

"It kept you out of trouble, didn't it?" Ceredin asks.

"You're still here?" Talyn looks around the room hopefully, and then frowns in confusion.

"I'm a lot of places. But the instance you're looking for left with Bialar for Moya. That was twenty three microts ago."

"Frell!" Talyn pounds the bed with a fist.

"Exactly," Gemmi agrees. "And that's not the worst news. The worst news is that Mina is apparently keeping me captive on the grounds that a pilot shouldn't leave her Leviathan."

"She's misunderstanding that." Talyn sighs and rubs at the back of his neck. "At least your link with her is still working. The stun blast knocked out my transponder. I can't get anything from Cer or from Bialar. Are they ok?"

"I don't know." Gemmi shakes her head slowly. "I can't hear anyone through the link except Mina. Which means both of our transponders were damaged, or--"

"We need to find a way to get to Moya."

"Yes," Gemmi agrees. "And Mina doesn't have a pod."

"Moya couldn't let it dock anyway. Not unless Cer has managed to get Pilot back in control."

"I have an emergency suit with a small propulsion pack. If you can find a way to get us inside Moya, maybe a maintenance hatch—ah!" She yelps and rubs at the back of her neck as Mina sends another jolt through the transponder.

"Enough!" Talyn barks the word angrily, grabs Gemmi by the shoulder, and yanks the transponder from her neck with the other hand. Soon he has the device switched with his own, and his eyes go unfocused as he addresses the hybrid. "You'll lose her if you keep treating her like that. You'll lose everything."

Talyn's mouth tightens as he listens to Mina's silent reply, and his hands clench into fists as he answers, "No, no you're not. I don't care what Bialar says. You're not the Atavist, you're just-- just a child in need of guidance. Gemmi's your frelling pilot, that means you listen to her."

His hand goes to the back of his neck and he nods slowly. "Can I trust you not to hurt her again? And you'll let her leave when she needs to? She's a two-arms-two-legs, Mina, you have to think of her as part pilot, part passenger. Can you?"

Apparently satisfied with Mina's answer, Talyn switches the transponders again.

Sorry. The hybrid's sullen apology rings through Gemmi's brain.

"I know, Mina." To Talyn, she says, "You protected me."

"I guess." He shrugs. "It's more like I protected Mina. She needs you."

"'Just a child in need of guidance?'" Gemmi repeats Talyn's words, smiling, though she can feel her eyes misting over.

"Seemed like the thing to say." He wipes a tear from her cheek and frowns at the moisture on his finger. "You really are fahrbot."

Gemmi wipes her cheeks dry with the back of one hand and fingers the datachip again. "I think that's been clearly established. Can you get us inside Moya?"

"If the propulsion pack on your suit can get us over there, then yeah, I can find a way in. You're the one Sikozu wants, so if you can pretend to give her what she's after, I can fix Moya's starburst chamber."

"And I can restore control to Pilot," Ceredin's disembodied voice adds. "Talyn can install me from the chip, Gemmi. Oh, don't bother protesting. You know as well as I do the bioloid instance probably got herself captured like a stupid negnik. No one can think properly on one of those things. It's all the sensory data, it's almost as bad as being a fully organic life form. Half the time, all that instance can do is regress on ways to get Talyn to--"

"She's right. About the chip, I mean." Gemmi lifts the cord over her head and presses her datachip into Talyn's palm.

"She's probably right about the rest of it, too. The part about being captured." Talyn stands up, taking Gemmi by the elbow and pulling her with him. "If Cer and Bialar had things under control, we would have heard from them by now. She wouldn't have broken the link with me, not unless something happened to her."

Gemmi squeezes Talyn's hand in a brief gesture of reassurance that feels as hollow as any words she could say. She steps into her emergency suit, secures the helmet in place, and follows Talyn down the corridor to one of Mina's airlocks.