Slapdash Neural Wiring | The Murderbot Diaries | SecUnit Nine #2 [✓]

1. I pack myself with agrochemicals

Full chapter title: I pack myself with "agrochemicals" that are totally not chemical weapons precursors

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Chapter summary:

Nine sneaks onto a ship that holds its friend hostage, but the ship's cargo isn't what it appears to be.

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Please heed content warnings in the story description.

- Strong language (swearing)
- Canon-typical violence
- Serious injuries
- Disfigurement or non-consensual body modification (occurs off-page, discussed)
- Minor character death
- Blood and gore
- Fire
- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Chemical Weapons
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A/N: 

This fic took me 622 (non-continuous) days to write. At one point I thought I'd finish before System Collapse released. In retrospect, it was pure hubris.

Inspired by Fugitive Telemetry: "I started to say that they never used SecUnits for espionage, and then I realized I didn't actually know that for sure. Take away our armor and alter our appearance and give us the right module..." (65)

Chronology:

Takes place after the events of my fanfiction, Returned Empty String but reading is not required to understand this fic. Just know that Nine stole Crypsis, an experimental cloaked vehicle, from Yimenes. 

Takes place post-Bharadwaj/SecUnit documentary, but no System Collapse spoilers.

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I absolutely fucking hate myself.

I had never planned an operation alone, much less an exfiltration. Planning had always been a job for a team.

My plans tended to be overly complicated shitshows with about a dozen points of failure per minute. My grand schemes had been tempered by mission partner Cyan, whose plans were elegant and simple.

Now as I looked at Cy's body, I realized how much of my life had been dedicated to serving Cyan. Like, maybe on some level, I'd stolen the experimental cloaked vehicle because my subconscious had taken Cy literally about the whole invisibility thing.

(Everything reminded me of Cy. It was fucking annoying.)

So finding Cyan in a mangled heap was a problem that I hadn't anticipated.

Maybe I should start at the beginning.

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I still hadn't listened to Mariroko's album Out of Pocket and it was going to become a problem for some humans.

I'd already seen a spoiler for the premise of the album via the feed, and spoilers pissed me off. The album was a something-subgenre dance album about clinical depression. That's why it was called Out of Pocket, I guess, because it was at once a party anthem as it was a condemnation of some CR humans' inability to access MedSystem without experiencing personal bankruptcy. That was so great I wished I could have learned about the premise of the album while listening to it.

I was still nursing my injured shoulder from when I had been shot, so I was inclined to be angry at corporations that would rather let people die than access MedSystem.

On the bright side (I tried to think of a bright side), I had privacy. I had time without interruption from dumbass humans. There, that was good, right?

I just needed one more thing before I could listen to the album, so I planned to do what I did best. (Put "best" in sarcastic tone indicator markings.) I planned an exfiltration, to steal one last person-thing from the company.