They have her by the wrists, and they save her from shredding the spray bandage that covers her fingers. She examines those fingers with all the concentration available to someone who is fairly sure she was drugged to sleep. Not that she’s complaining. And the fingers look okay. They hurt, but they move. And she’s not dead, how about that? That’s not something you can take for granted, is it? Lately, anyway. She is warm and alive and she has all her limbs and—
Can we go through all this later, says her body with a pointed biofeedback signal, because it has physical needs too.
All right then, first things first. “I—” she says out loud, and stops. Her own voice has startled her, raspy and deeper than she’s ever heard it. She swallows through the burn in the back of her throat. “I need to go to my room,” she says. When the suit doesn’t respond immediately, she touches the inner wall with one bandaged hand. She doesn’t know which Eleven she’ll get. Will it be the cheerful advertiser of features, the blithe reader of its own brochure? Or will it be the Eleven who has now saved her life twice over?
“Does your intelligence reside in a biological waste–producing shell?” booms Eleven. “Are you weary of halting missions midway because of the pressing needs of nature? The AivvTech UAE provides a full waste management suite, from water recycling to—”
“Eleven,” she says. “Don’t be gross.”
“This sub-legal intelligence does not—”
“You fooled Hood,” she says. “But you can’t fool me. You saved me. Twice. I know you’re more than just a—” She stops, searching for a word.
[A moron?] appears, superimposed on the purple ice outside.
She feels her chapped face form the tiniest beginning of a smile. There’s the intelligence she was looking for. “Well, I wasn’t going to say exactly that, but—”
[And it’s three times.]
She thinks back. Oh, right, it is three times. “Fine,” she says. “You saved me three times. And maybe after somebody saves you a bunch of times you don’t really want to…you know. Inside them.”
[I’m sure you’ll know the sanitation station in your room soon enough.]
“Yeah…but it really is a moron. It’s not even a one-point—” She stops.
[1.75?] says Eleven.
“Okay let me start over. I don’t want to treat you like a sanitation station. I want to treat you like a—”
[Like a…?]
Sarya pauses, again looking for a word, but her thoughts are interrupted by a body that reminds her that this is not the time or the place. “Look, we can take this apart later,” she says. “But for now, I really need to go.”
No words appear for a long moment, made longer by Sarya’s current biological condition. Then, finally:
[Thank you.]
The straps lower her to the floor and retract into the walls. Sarya stumbles as the suit’s gravity ramps up to match the ship outside. Has she really been at reduced weight for that long? She leans on the wall and massages a leg with one hand. “Okay,” she says after a moment. “Ready.”
A series of heavy thunks vibrate through her boots, and the suit cracks in half with a blast of freezing air. Sarya swears. Her survival instincts are apparently back and in full gear, because now there is a war between needs going on. Staying here is looking better and better. “Actually—”
And for the second time in less than a day, she’s shoved down the suit’s ramp. She stumbles in the high gravity and barely keeps her feet all the way down. She clamps her arms around herself, pressing heating coils into her sides, and turns to see the suit already folding closed. “Very funny!” she calls, teeth already chattering.
“Thank you for choosing this AivvTech Universal Autonomous Environment!” says the suit. “If you have feedback, please don’t hesitate to share!”
Sarya does have feedback, and she sends it in the form of an obscene Widow gesture.
BACK AT YOU, says Eleven in brilliant yellow, perfectly replicating the sign with its small utility arms.
The ice tunnels are the worst part until the ladder, and the ladder is the worst part until the top of the ladder. It takes her three tries to hit the switch at the top—hanging from bandaged hands, shivering violently and wondering if this is the end—and when the hatch cranks open and she pulls herself out into the warmth of the upper ship, she would swear she’s almost dead again. But when the hatch grinds closed below her she is left hanging in warm air,