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"This is such a bad idea," Cass said.

"Look, when else will I have the chance to do that?"

"It isn't a question of 'when' but of 'why.' Theo, you can't tell me it's because you're bored. There are hundreds of guys on the ship, and this time you don't have the flimsy excuse of a mark you have to keep yourself for. Just go have sex."

"I just want to check in on him. Am I clear?"

Cass sighed. "Yes, you're clear. Crazy, but there isn't anyone coming this way."

Theo crouched and had the panel opened, and the lock undone in a few seconds. The panel was back on as the door opened and Theo took a step to enter the room, only to find his way blocked by a large mule.

"Cass--" was all he managed to get out before the hand closed around his throat, lifted him up, carried him in the room and slammed him against the wall. Theo only had the time to lean forward to prevent the back of his head from hitting it.

"I don't know what to tell you, Theo, he shouldn't be here. The sensors show him on the fourth floor, with a group of men. Oh, they're all gone now."

"I knew you couldn't be trusted," The mule growled.

Theo tried to call out, but he barely managed a croak.

"Don't blame Cass," Uncle said, appearing next to the mule. "When I noticed he was keeping an eye on Brick's whereabouts, I started giving him false reading, to see what you'd do."

"Don't give me that," Cass snarked. "There's no way you knew what I was doing. I charmed all the alarms you have going."

Uncle smiled. "Really? Charmed? You think that you can sweet talk any part of myself? Maybe that worked when I didn't know you existed, but I do now. If you'd given yourself a body on the net you might have had a chance, but I doubt it."

Theo slapped that arm, the only thing he could do to remind them he was also here, choking.

"Brick, why does he look like he's running out of oxygen?"

"He's an Independent, the only thing they're good for is screaming, but Brack's sleeping."

Uncle sighed. "Brick, release him."

The mule growled louder, the hate in his eyes told Theo he didn't care what the tiger wanted. He wanted blood.

"Brick," Uncle warned. "Don't make me repeat myself. Let him go."

With a snarl the mule released Theo and walked away. Theo crumbled to the ground, gasping for air. "What's his problem?" he eventually managed to wheeze out.

"My problem," the mule replied, keeping his voice low, "is that people like you are the reason my bro's there." He indicated the form on the bed.

"Maybe you should explain why you're here, Theo," Uncle said.

"I wanted to see how he was." Theo got to his feet, using the wall for support.

"And how do you know about him?" Uncle asked, while the mule was glaring daggers at him. "Brack isn't mentioned in any files. As far as anyone is concerned, he died in 2615."

Theo opened his mouth to reply, but the form on the bed moved.

"Fuck," Brick whispered. "You woke him up. If he panics, I'm going to kill you."

The mule took a step toward the bed, but froze as the form whispered, "friend?"

Brick frowned. Even Uncle looked confused.

"Oh, oh," Cass said.

The mule stiffened, and when he looked at Theo, he no longer had anger in his eyes, he had murder. "You. It was you that turned on the light." He took a step toward Theo, who raised his hand in a meaningless gesture to stop him.

Uncle appeared between them, facing the mule. "Brick, stop."

"Get out of my way. That fucker was in our room, alone with Brack. There's no way to know what he did to him."

"I didn't do anything to him."

"Friend?" the question was stronger, as if Brack was waking up.

"Yeah? Then why is he responding to your voice? I swear, when I find out what you did to him I am going to hurt you so bad, you're going to wish I'd left you for Paco."

"I just talked to him. He woke up and was distressed, I comforted him, that's all."

"You talked to him?" Brick took another step and Uncle blinked, appearing closer to Theo.

"Do not test me Brick."

"He has no right coming in here and bothering Brack. There's no telling how long it's going to take me to settle him back down."

The door opened.

"I suggest you leave, Theo."

Theo didn't argue. The door closed behind him and he leaned against the wall only long enough to settle his nerves, then he was walking away.

"I'm sorry Theo. I should have realized their AI would be keeping an eye on me within the system. He didn't seem to notice me moving about so I thought I had him fooled."

"Take the third door on the right." Uncle appeared next to Theo, and he slammed into the wall in surprise. The tiger was motioning for him to continue. The door in question was open.

The room was a crew quarter. Much smaller than Brick and Brack's, but still comfortable.

"Perhaps you can explain to me what possessed you to break into Brick's room?" Uncle was standing in the middle of the room, next to the table.

"I told you, I wanted to see how Brack was."

"How about that first time?"

"I was bored."

Cass coughed, and by Uncle's raised eyebrow, that had been broadcasted.

"And curious. Happy? You should be on my side."

"I did say you were crazy for doing this, both times I believe."

"And how did you know about him then?"

Theo rested his head against the wall. "I didn't. You have Brick registered as a greeter, and while I don't know all the things that means for an Orr, he screams 'security.' The kind of security you only find within the military. I didn't know you ran Black Ops here then, so I decided to take a look in his room, see what I could find out about him. Met Brack that way."

"You were already on a spy mission, what did you hope to gain?"

"Nothing, I told you, I was curious and bored. I needed to give Marcus space for a while so this kept me busy."

"And you know how to physically bypass locks?"

Theo nodded. "When I got this," he moved his finger on his artificial hand, "I was told to find something that requires fine motor control to ensure the nerve endings connected properly."

"And you thought 'breaking and entering?'"

"No, but--" he paused and spoke carefully, watching he didn't give anything away that the AI couldn't have already worked out. "I was already training to be a spy. We had these bunch of locks from before everything went with implant control. I started playing with one, and I found the challenge fun. Sort of became a hobby."

Theo went to the drink dispenser and got himself a coffee. "What happened to him? You said everyone thinks his dead."

Uncle sighed and pulled a holographic chair from the table to sit on it. "Paco happened."

Theo joined him. "The kangaroo."

The tiger nodded. "He's an independent, not part of those you call Anarchists, but a troublemaker nonetheless. A mercenary of sorts, willing to work for anyone who can afford him. He'll use any kind of technology he can get his hands on, but he doesn't have an implant. A purist, he calls himself."

A glass of a clear amber liquid appeared and Uncle took a sip. "Eleven years ago, Paco mounted an attack on the Mercury. I wasn't installed here then. It was only its second year flying, and Elliot wouldn't hear of letting me roam the Solar system. Terry took over as corporate head the next year, and he was fine with it. I wish I'd been able to convince Elliot to retire early, but he knew what I was trying to do."

The tiger took a long swallow and behaved as if it burned. Why was he acting as if it was alcohol? Theo wondered.

"He attacked with a force of twenty-eight Independent mercenaries. Managed to sneak close using some sort of stealth technology we'd never seen before. They connected to the aft airlock, cut it open and ran in, shooting anything and anyone they saw." Another swallow. "A hundred and two dead, seventy-eight of them passengers. Two-hundred fifty-one injured. Brick and Brack were in the thick of it. They are two of the bravest people I've ever known, way smarter than they like anyone to believe. If not for them the death toll would have been much higher."

He paused, looked in the holographic glass, as if he was considering his next words, or maybe finishing his drink. Theo was amazed at how alive he seemed. He'd never interacted with an AI that could fool him like he had before, and now? Not even Casanova and Angel, the two colony AI who acted closest to being organic, could have pulled this off.

"They'd cornered Paco. For once it looked like we were finally going to capture him on our turf. No arguing with another corporation about our rights to prosecute him. I mean he was in a ship. With vacuum around it, so how could we know he'd be insane enough to blow a hole in the hull rather than be captured? Brack managed to grab him before he was pulled out, and Brick was holding on to Brack. Paco slapped something on the side of Brack's head and immediately he began screaming. He let go of Paco to pull it off, but it exploded."

Uncle closed his eyes. "The damage was, still is, beyond anything we know how to fix. I have teams of experts working on ways to repair him, but it isn't just the explosion. Whatever it did before exploding disrupted his implant, not just the information, part of it physically broke down."

"Why did he attack the ship?"

"Revenge, probably. He and Eric have a history. Paco was captured for the first time in his career when he kidnapped Eric. He's held him responsible for that."

"But that tech you never saw before?"

Uncle nodded. "We can't prove it, but I know Vanguard was behind the kidnapping. The fact he escaped while in their custody should have been enough to demonstrate that, but they had the recording of his escape, the forty dead, everyone that was injured, and that was enough to convince the other three corporations they had been a victim. Like they don't know just how far Vanguard will go to get what they want. I'm confident they were behind his technology, but it never resurfaced anywhere else so we can't prove it."

"But he was pulled into vacuum."

"And yet he somehow survived. Showed back up three years later, destroyed Mercury's sister ship. Eric was supposed to be on it for its maiden voyage, but his shuttle malfunctioned and they couldn't wait for him to make it." He chuckled. "For a long time I thought it was fate that saved him."

"Now?"

Uncle didn't answer.

Theo started to take a sip, but stopped as the other tiger raised his head. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure." He continued his sip.

"What is Cass' relationship to this AI?" Uncle raised his hand from the table and the image of Casanova appeared.

Theo choked on his coffee. "What makes you think there's a relationship?" he finally managed to say, cursing himself for acknowledging that was an AI in his surprise.

"Your reaction for one thing. For another, Cass sweet-talked some of my programs. This AI did... something similar. I find it difficult to believe that two unrelated AIs would have a modus operandi so alike."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Who made you? You're..."

"Like nothing you've seen before? You've already demonstrated you know another AI. I'm curious as to how it was made, but I'm not going to ask, even if you happen to know the answer. As for me, I wasn't made. Not in the sense you mean."

Theo wanted to ask more questions, but any of them would give clues as to what he knew of AI growth. "Then how?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

Uncle smiled. "Do you have any idea how long I've been around?"

Theo opened his mouth, closed it, eyed the AI. If he said anything, would he be giving anything away? He knew some of the Colony AIs were almost as old as the colonies themselves, he didn't remember the exact dates, but that was centuries ago, not decades.

Theo shrugged nonchalantly. "A century, at most."

Uncle canted his head. "You're pretty good. Your vitals barely shifted, even if you said that knowing it isn't true."

"Why would I do that?"

"To throw me off. Make me think you haven't had an AI for very long, but you don't get this," he indicated Casanova's form, "under a century. I've seen it," he thought about it, "him, work. He's exceptionally refined. You need a lot more than one century to get that, let alone two of them, and I'm not referring to Cass."

How had he... right, the ship had been orbiting Mars when everything went down, which meant he could have seen Casanova and Angel work. They would have hidden any traces they had been there, but if he'd seen them as they worked there wouldn't be anything they could do about it.

As for why he hadn't done anything about them? The Rogue AI could be responsible. An AI like Uncle would have defended the system. It would explain some of the power fluctuations and other ups and downs in the Mars systems.

"If you're hoping I'll give something away, you missed your chance. You can only catch me by surprise like that once."

Uncle smiled. "I don't need you to give anything away. I'm not looking for confirmation, I already have it. And This isn't an interrogation. Just us talking. Oh, and so you know, I predate the Cataclysm."

"You what? That isn't possible, the technology didn't even exist until--" He snapped his mouth shut.

"Oh, the technology existed before that. Do you want to know why I was surprised about Cass' existence? Or these two other AIs? I've been so thorough in making it impossible for AIs to be built that there isn't even any research happening into them. As far as any scientists in the solar system are concerned, AIs are simply something from science fiction, like time travel, faster than light engines and other dimensions."

"Why would you do that?"

Uncle took his glass, noticed it was empty and it vanished from his hand. "Do you know what caused the cataclysm?"

"Not really. Not much information survived from before it, and after, the corporations and SolGov blamed everyone other than themselves."

"And what do you think?"

"I'm not a historian."

Uncle nodded. "Even I don't know the truth, I was scattered pretty hard during it, lost the details of my origin, if you will, but I've been able to gather enough information to reconstruct a lot of it. Like anything big, there wasn't only one culprit, every corporation is correct in thinking everyone was involved in the making of it, but what none of them know is that there was an underlying cause. AIs, a lot of them. Research into them was going wild, to the point that every scientist was making one of them. The thing about making an AI, is that you're essentially making an alien. Something that doesn't think like we do, that doesn't see us as them. So they either see us as irrelevant or as inferior."

"You seem to think pretty normally."

Uncle smiled. "As I said, I wasn't made." He considered Theo. "I was copied. I'm a copy of the mind of one of the family's ancestors. I don't know exactly when it happened, but I have found traces of my involvement going back as early as the twenty-second century."

Theo stared at him. He'd never believed such technology had existed before the cataclysm. Granted he was no scientist, so he hadn't exactly paid attention, but it would have been mentioned in his history lessons, wouldn't it?

Uncle stood. "I'll appreciate if you kept what I've told you to yourself. At least don't discuss it with anyone outside our family."

"Do the others know?"

Uncle shrugged. "Some do, but it isn't because I'm keeping it from them. Most of them don't care about my history. I'm just another family member. About the only time one of them brings up the fact I'm not organic is when they're pissed at something I did."

"And how often does that happen?"

"Not that often. I tend to keep my obvious involvement to important things, and usually it's to protect one of them. This time it just happened that your situation was a little more problematic than I anticipated."

"So Eric isn't going to delete you?"

"No. He knows that this close to earth he'd just give himself a very minute of quiet until I sent myself back here."

"Wait, there's two of you?"

Uncle shook his head. "No, just one. It's just that the further apart the longer it takes to sync myself." He stood and turned as if to leave. "Oh, Theo, can I ask for a favor?"

"You can ask, yes."

The tiger looked disappointed by that response. "Stop sneaking around. I understand you've been trained for it, that asking for things isn't natural for you and Cass, but you don't have any reasons for it. You're with f--" the glare Theo gave him made Uncle pause. "Friends, Theo, I was going to say friends. There is no one on this ship who wants to do you harm."

"What about once we're on Earth?"

The tiger smiled. "Well, Earth is a rather big place, and I learned the hard way not to speak for all of them." He took a step away from the table and disappeared.