Come Clean

Chapter Five:

Beka watched them go from her height before sighing and leaning against the ladder. She didn't want to lie to him, but she also didn't want to tell him about the rough parts. He'd remember it soon enough if he got his memory back, and if he didn't… If he didn't then it would be either a fresh start or a relatively clean break. Maybe. Frankly she wasn't sure which possibility to hope for at this point, with how messed up it all was.

She had to tell him something, though. He seemed suspicious already with the situation, moreso with her particularly, and she understood why but evading the topic of the last several months wasn't going to help. It was just that addressing it probably wouldn't help, and there was a good chance that if she did he was even less likely to put the damn helix back on. But she didn't want to feel like she was trapping him, either, especially if she was wrong about fixing them after all.

A couple of days. She just needed a couple of days. Time for him to either remember or realize he wouldn't, time for him to maybe believe her because she knew he wouldn't trust her in that short a span, time for her to know for certain. Time to figure it all out, because she had to.

Tyr spent the walk to Med deck as deep in thought as he dared without being unaware of his surroundings. Thus far nobody's responses to his questions or statements had indicated any kind of deception, except for Beka's response to his last question. If none or all had been he would be more suspicious of a statement or delusion; with one and only one, and it being such a personal one, the realization pushed him to seriously consider this as reality, albeit an upside-down one in which he had lost two Nietzschean women and a son for a Human woman and a half-Human daughter. And only one, no less. He would have expected a Nietzschean wife to choose to be pregnant again by now, if not having delivered a second already, and he could not imagine that having gone so far as to marry Beka and urge her to have his child he would shy away from encouraging a second.

Unless that was why the less-than-upfront answer. He wanted another and she was refusing? Or the other way around, where he balked? Of course, it could still be neither of these. If he had one or more Nietzschean wives who were willing to overlook the aberration of a Human wife, children may not be an issue but the existence of other women causing tension. So many Humans seemed to profess wanting monogamy, after all, and Beka hadn't expressed a preference indicating she didn't in the first year of their acquaintance.

But this was pointless. Unless he remembered— or broke out of this, an option that seemed increasingly unlikely given how thorough the information he was being presented with was— he would know nothing that she didn't want him to know; his odds of easily getting a straight answer from someone who had lived her life with fraud and confidence schemes were low. Speculating was getting him nowhere. He had to focus on regaining what he had lost, whether that was his mind or his freedom.

So when they reached Med deck he submitted to another round of scans and tests, though with great wariness. He answered questions about what he had done the day before and so far that day, presumably to check that the memory loss had neither progressed nor regressed. He waited relatively patiently as Trance, Harper, and Rommie compared all the results to each other, including his nanobot samples to those taken from Dylan and Catherine.

"So," Harper concluded, "I can try knocking out just the defensive nanos with a targeted frequency and miss your regular ones or I can try a general pulse which would knock them all out and I just grow you new ones from Cath's. I can maybe program a targeted virus, too, one that for sure breaks them down fast, but I can't guarantee it won't mutate and get them all instead of just the defensive ones, and then I'll need to start from scratch to design new ones all over again and that'll take a while."

Tyr hesitated. "From Catherine's? Where did hers come from?"

"Yours. I had to do a little tweaking to customize them, because they were designed for a full Nietzschean rather than a half, but I can undo those pretty easily."

"I see." He leaned on his arm, considering. "Why a virus instead of just the pulse?"

"The pulse may not clear them out. If I'm right and yours aren't affected, or I grow you new ones based on the old ones afterward, then they'll probably break down the invading nanos. The virus would get rid of them completely and quickly, but I can't promise they'll stick with just the problem ones because of the hybridization. Basically I have two options for a one-stop shop that leaves you vulnerable for a couple of days and one that won't leave you vulnerable but may not work completely."

And all of this was theoretical. "And if I do nothing? Refuse to try any of your options?"

"They'll reactivate once you sleep," Trance said quietly. "They're dormant, not dead. I checked. Take a nap and you'll lose your memories of the Andromeda completely. A full night's sleep would get rid of your work as a mercenary."

"And more than one and I'll think I'm a child again." He rubbed his hand over his face in frustration. "They're defensive nanos. Do they have any kind of safeguard against tampering that might activate with any of the options?"

"It's unlikely based on our analysis," Rommie assured him. It was less reassuring with her next sentence. "Of course, if we're wrong, you'll probably be beyond caring at that point."

Harper gave her a reprimanding glare for that before turning his attention back to Tyr. "It's unlikely, I think. The hybridization makes it harder to be completely sure with any of them. If there are defenses in there, the virus makes it more likely for them to have time to activate and communicate with each other, since it won't work instantly on all of them. Just knocking them out, either targeted or general, should be safer because it should just fry their circuits without doing the same to yours. So to speak."

"And they can't just reactivate?"

"No. And with the targeted pulse your own should recognize them as invaders again and start breaking them down before they have time to reboot, if they can at all."

Tyr looked between the other three, waiting with various degrees of patience. "These plans," he said at last, "all involve an unsettling number of shoulds."

"Yeah, but the clock's ticking until you can't keep from falling asleep, even if we break out some kind of stimulant, and I only have so many hats and rabbits to pull out of them." Harper hesitated. "Do you want me to call Beka so you can talk to her?"

"Why?" Tyr realized why a beat later. None of the others called him on it, mercifully. "No." She didn't have any better idea than he did, regardless, and he didn't trust in her telling him the whole truth after her omission in their last conversation. Trance might be the one to consult on the best option and even if he should believe this was reality, but he didn't trust her at all, let alone to be upfront rather than obfuscatory.

And thus far it seemed to in fact be reality. Not only was his own body and instincts, his muscle memory, reacting as if it were, but unless whoever had created this scenario— and for what purpose?— knew enough of his history to know of Medea as well as Freya, it was coming from his own mind. He doubted the Dragons or many of their other adversaries had advanced enough technology to sink this deep into his subconscious and unconscious mind. If this were not real, his options were extremely limited. If this were real, he had almost as few. But those around him appeared to be genuine. There had already been multiple opportunities for anyone here to enact an unpleasant fate for him and they had not. The only instance of lying or evading the truth he'd been able to determine was in his conversation with Beka.

Loathe though he was to do so, he was going to have to take this on faith. Or some sembleace thereof. "Deactivate the invasive nanobots," he said abruptly. "Leave mine if you can."

Harper nodded. "Right." He didn't seem surprised at all— but then, if they had in fact been on the same ship for the last four years… "I want you to lie down just in case. Trance, stay with him and monitor, okay? Rommie, I want you to look over the final tweaks." She repaired with him to one of the computer screens while Tyr and Trance did as they were asked, Tyr himself breathing evenly and deeply only with great effort. He had made the decision, what decision he could under the circumstances; now all that was left to see it through, although not without trepidation and being alert for the knife to twist after all. This was not aided by the whispered exchange he heard between Harper and Rommie as they worked.

"Are you sure this will work?"

"Sure as God made little green Martians."

"… He didn't."

"Exactly."

Calm. He would be calm and ready to act if there were anything he could do. He held himself to that as Harper approached and wondered if he had made the right choice.

"Beka?"

Beka jumped and smacked her shoulder into the underside of the control panel. Muttering something unrepeatable, she crawled out and into the pilot's chair to see Andromeda on the overhead screen. "Yeah?"

The AI frowned. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, fine." She sighed at the concerned look she got. "I just banged my shoulder, that's all." Physically, anyway. "What's going on?"

"Harper and Trance have come up with a way to neutralize the nanobots affecting Tyr. They're using it on him now."

"Okay. Will it get his memory back or not?"

"Uncertain. I'll keep you updated."

"Thanks." Beka sat back as the screen blinked out. She really, really wanted to go see him, but in his current state of mind she doubted he'd have asked for her. She just… had to wait. She wasn't good at waiting. Maybe after Cath woke up she could take her by Med deck and see if he was willing to or in any shape to see them. At a minimum she could get a full update from Trance and Harper. Preferably Harper, really, given how very good Trance was at knowing things Beka may not want known, whether it was from future knowledge or just being a self-proclaimed good guesser. There were a few things she didn't even want to think about too close to Trance right now. Not that Beka really thought Trance could read minds, but at this point she wouldn't bet against it.

Honestly, she just wanted to know if she was going to get "her" Tyr back. All the rest would have to wait.

So she went back to work on the control panel, alert to both the possibility of another update and to any potential stirrings from the bunkroom. The stirrings came first, though not by much; she'd only just retrieved and cleaned up from her nap a still blurry-eyed Cath when the screen in the galley lit up. "Beka?"

"Here." Cath protested at being carried rather than allowed to walk, but she ignored it. "How's it going?"

"So far as anticipated. The nanobots appear to have been neutralized, but there's no indication as to whether this will allow him to access already-formed memories. There have been no negative effects, but Trance is going to keep him in Med deck for the rest of the afternoon for observation as a precautionary measure."

"Okay." Beka nodded, absentmindedly switching the side she was holding Cath on when the girl swung out to try to grab her empty tea mug off the bar. "I guess tell me when he gets out? Unless he wants to see one of us before that?" If they still didn't know if he'd remember anything, she doubted he would, but then he'd sought her out earlier for answers…

"I will." And Andromeda was gone again.

Beka waited a moment longer, probably foolishly, hoping for more even though she knew better. She wouldn't be surprised if the only reason she was getting any updates was because Tyr hadn't expressly forbidden them, and that was more likely to be because he hadn't thought that she would want them than because he wanted her to have them. She only started to move when Cath caught her attention by trying to dive down to the floor out of impatience. "All right, we'll go, we'll go."

The rest of the day dragged. It wasn't empty, by any means: even a theoretical day off meant that she could still be stopped by one of her pilots with questions about their rota, and Harper had asked her days before to look over modifications for the Maru when she had time. Fortunately, Cath was still young enough that reading the details to her entertained her almost as much as a story aimed at her. Beka also privately hoped it served as imprinting. Still, nothing served enough to distract her from the awareness of time passing and how much she didn't know yet, so it was a relief when she realized it was time to get Cath dinner as a marker of the day progressing without anything else actually going wrong. She was still walking her to the mess when Andromeda flickered in ahead of them.

"Tyr's been released from Med deck," she announced without preamble. "I'm still monitoring him, at Trance's request, but she and Harper are satisfied that the nanobots are permanently deactivated without damage to his own or his brain."

And there went some of the tension that had been riding Beka's shoulders that day, although by no means all. "Good. Do you know where he's going?" She wasn't sure if she wanted to try to talk to him again or not, although if they were heading for the same place that may not be an option.

Andromeda got that faraway look that meant she was checking. "He didn't say. He does appear to be going to the senior officers' quarters."

"Thank you." There was no guarantee that he was actually going to their quarters, or that he was going to stay there once he had, but it was a start. For now she had to feed the girl pulling at her hand and get something to eat herself, so she'd have to worry about it later.