Silence....

Taiga woke up, if one could call it waking up, to find himself strapped down in the medical bay of a military vessel. His vision was fogging over, and he couldn't escape a slight sense of disorientation. It took him longer than he would have preferred to figure out what was going on--he had been drugged.

...which was ridiculous. No one went to the bother of drugging a cyborg--the various implants would filter the chemicals out of their system almost immediately. Any Esthar soldier should know that.

Then again....

Taiga shook his head, blinking. The fog wasn't clearing.

He closed his eyes. "Directive," he mumbled. "ICI Diagnostic."

Diagnostic error, came the disheartening reply. Attempting to re-initialize data path.

"Query," he tried. "Define insanity."

A persistent aberration from typical mental functions.

"Query. Define typical."

Exhibiting traits or qualities characteristic of or identifying a specific category.

"Query."

Query accepted.

"Recall previous two queries, disregard the second."

Stored in memory.

"Analyze host."

There was a pause, the brief flutter of memories a familiar sensation in the back of his mind.

Analysis complete. Symptoms found. Further analysis recommended.

He smiled. "Query."

Query accepted.

"Access query logs. Enumerate occurrences of similar queries regarding insanity."

Specify parameters for similarity.

"Identical query, results stating symptoms found."

There was a pause. 41 similar queries found.

"Time elapsed since first similar query?"

Six years, twenty-eight days, eighteen hours.

"Is it possible for someone to be insane that long and never think for a moment that they were?"

There was another pause. Query not recognized.

Taiga sighed. "Overview?"

Taiga C1128513. Analysis: Uncertain. Directive: Disregard. Status: Damaged. Directive: Repair. Energy: Depleted. Directive: Feed. Location: Great Esthar Bay. Directive:

There was silence.

"...directive?"

Directive accepted.

"No. I mean--what is my directive?"

Query not recognized.

Taiga opened his eyes--only to see the same fog--if anything, worse now than it had been before. He quickly closed them again. "Location."

Location: Great Esthar Bay. Directive:

Silence again.

Taiga's hands clenched on nothing. "Status!"

Status: Damaged. Directive: Repair.

You don't believe that any more than I do, you tinny bastard-- "Status! Status!"

Status: Damaged. Directive: Repair.

Taiga opened his eyes again, concentrating with all his might on clearing the fog that so stubbornly hovered in front of him. "Query. Define insanity."

A persistent aberration from typical mental functions.

"Query. Analyze ICI."

Silence. Then, finally, Query not applicable.

"I'm beginning to think I'm not the one going insane," Taiga said--and then laughed, even though it wasn't funny. "It's the voice in my head! That's the insane one!"

The ICI had nothing to say to that.

Had he been paying attention, he might have noticed that the ship had come to rest a few minutes ago. Instead, he didn't register it until the door to the medical bay opened and a Solder stepped in.

"Can you walk?" was the first thing he said.

Taiga looked in his general direction--he was an indistinct blur, with a faint haze around the edges. "Can I walk? Do I look like I can walk?"

"You look like you're a cyborg," the man said.

"You'd be surprised how much that doesn't count for anything," Taiga retorted.

"Are you saying yes, you can, or no, you can't?" the soldier asked. It was clear in his tone that he was running out of patience.

"Do I look like I've tried to stand up in the last few minutes?" Taiga shot back, just as angrily.

The soldier was about to retort, but bit his tongue. Approaching warily, he undid the restraints and stepped back.

Taiga sat up slowly. There was a mild sense of dizziness, but not debilitating. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he stood up all the way.

And very nearly fell over.

The soldier caught his arm to steady him, and Taiga put his other hand out for balance.

The soldier sighed, keeping his grip on Taiga's arm. "We'll get you to Hadai's lab," he said. "Come with me."

-

As it turned out, Taiga was the last one off the boat.

Everyone was waiting for him as he came stumbling out, He mumbled something about being sorry to keep them waiting before he realized how ridiculous it sounded--he had gotten them all arrested and dragged to Esthar under armed guard, and he was sorry to keep them waiting? He chalked it up to the ICI and his disorientation, and shrugged it off.

As soon as he had stepped off the gangplank and onto solid ground, Fujin rushed to his side to help him. The movement evidently looked like a charge--the soldier escorting Taiga dropped his arm and leveled his shotel at Fujin. Once it was apparent she wasn't going to attack him, however, he dropped it with an aggravated curse.

Taking the initiative, Raijin stepped up to support Taiga's other side--very nearly lifting him off the ground as he did so. The soldiers glanced at each other, and one motioned to the land transport waiting for them. "We'll ride into the city, then take the skyway to the Lab District, and then walk. Come on."

No one seemed inclined to make further conversation as they stepped onto the transport--least of all Taiga. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned against whatever seemed most solid--hoping that the drugs the ICI wouldn't take care of would wear off on their own. He was quiet when he had to open his eyes to step off the transport to wait for a skyway car, quiet when they had to wait through three to commandeer an empty one, and quiet as they shot through the translucent tubes toward their destination.

They were attracting quite a number of glances, now, from everyone they passed by--it wasn't usual to see anyone under such heavy guard rocketing through the city. In the presence of the meticulously clean Esthar streets and the ubiquitously pressed and proper Esthar robes, the travel-worn group was certainly an aberration.

They stepped off in the Lab District amid stares that not everyone bothered to conceal. One of the soldiers checked something on a small map, and motioned them off down a side street. Hadai's lab wasn't far away--it only took a few blocks to arrive there, standing under the ESOC logo and the smaller Ministry of Observational Research label below it.

The lead soldier walked up to the door, hit the intercom button, and carried on a quick conversation with the person on the other side. After a slight delay, the main door slid open to reveal a short woman in Esthar robes, with a badge of authority on her left shoulder.

Jenn Hadai smiled at them as if they had come bearing gifts.

"Men," she said, addressing the soldiers, "the ESOC extends its warmest thanks. You're dismissed, now. And as for you--" she turned to the ragged company, eyes skipping over them all and registering everything, "come in. I know we'll have a lot to discuss."