Rick was conflicted.
His head felt like it was splitting in two, every second simultaneously pulling him towards two different extremes. They're here; we're in danger. We're safe for now. We're so very unprepared. The marines are well-trained and we have a hell of a lot of weaponry.
Jesus is unreliable. We can trust him.
Rick would be lying if he said he wasn't glad Jesus had volunteered. His head was filled with the familiar litany of don't trust him, he can't be believed, he's not what he seems to be, he's a puppet but who's pulling his strings?, and he couldn't get the memories of Blake from his head long enough to start trusting Jesus, couldn't turn his back on the… well, android, synthetic, artificial person… whatever… without his skin starting to crawl.
And yet he knew it wasn't fully rational. Jesus wasn't Blake. Jesus hadn't given any indication he'd be like Blake. Jesus had been nothing but helpful throughout all of their encounters. Hell, Jesus was volunteering to put himself in danger to save them, and what possible alternative motive was there for offering to take on a job that might get him killed?
He couldn't make up his mind, thoughts spewing off into countless directions like the spray of sparks from Rosita's blowtorch as she sliced through the metal of one of the installation's pipes. She was good with the tool, a perfect circle carved through the steel with heat and pressure, edges smooth and uniform. Had he any intellectual brainpower not spent on staring at Jesus and trying to just figure him out, Rick might have been impressed.
As it was, the curved metal falling into the pipe was what finally jerked him from his haze, the clatter of steel on steel loud in the room. The thing was easy to remove from the pipe, and someone - Rick was still just a little focused on Jesus to notice who - tossed it to the ground, uncaring as it banged against the metal grating.
Rick's contemplation was finally disrupted completely as Jesus's face disappeared into the pipe, flashlight joining it while the artificial man looked down the channel. Rick couldn't see in - especially not around the man's torso - but it must have been clear for Jesus to confidently stick both feet into the hole.
Still, Rick's concern over Jesus's trustworthiness aside, he was trusted by the other marines and definitely taking the journey, so the only thing left to do was to run with it. "How long?"
Jesus looked over, the look on his face so blank that Rick could almost see the code being run behind his eyes. "Well… This conduit runs almost to the uplink assembly. Maybe, 180 meters. Say forty minutes to crawl down there-"
"Right."
"An hour to patch in and align the antenna…" He trailed off, face still calculating - literally - as Rick handed him the bags of tools and supplies he'd need, slipping them into the pipe. "30 minutes to prep the ship…" Another beat as he climbed into the pipe, his lower half disappearing into the scarily-narrow pipe until only his face, lit up ominously by the light of his flashlight, was visible through the gap. "And about 50 minutes flight time."
Rick shakes his head, slight concern taking root in his gut. "That's gonna be close."
Jesus failed to respond, too concerned with the handgun Rosita pulled from seemingly nowhere, eyes showing some artificial version of concern as he twisted it back and forth. It didn't take a genius to figure out that he didn't seem to like the weapon, nor to ascertain that he almost certainly wouldn't be using it if trouble arose. Another flashback to Blake flickered into the present - this one surprisingly useful as he recalled memories of the hand-to-hand fighting skills given to all synthetics - and Rick took the gun, ignoring the surprising flash of something like gratitude of all things on Jesus's face.
And yet Rosita was moving before Rick could even consider the expression, the metal circle reappearing as she moved it closer to the pipe. Rick managed to bite out a simple, "Good luck," despite his conflict between confusion and distrust, watching as Jesus helped guide the section of conduit back into place.
Jesus grinned once through the remaining gap. "See you soon. Watch your fingers." And then he was gone, hidden by the sheet of metal.
A few seconds passed, Jesus's shuffling crawl down the pipe just barely audible from outside until Rosita spoke, some mumbled Spanish that Rick's high school education just barely translated to "Go with God." And then the sound of Jesus's progress was gone, buried beneath the hiss of Rosita soldering the thing back into place.
Rick didn't quite know whether to trust Jesus or not, but one thing was definitely clear… The man's mission had to go right or they were, to put it lightly, fucked.