to chase away the monsters

Chapter 3

Cold.

He imagined it would feel cold in space.

Floating with the remains of Sevastopol, he was unable to feel anything. All of his sensors were out. Was he even alive? The only thing that gave him some sense of existence was the location index and his company leash, the emergency beacon. Soon a Weyland-Yutani ship would come for him to collect the data inside him.

Not the kind of pick-me-up he needed.

God, he hoped Amanda got out in time. Was there any chance they would let him live just enough to learn about her fate? He wished he could calculate the probability of that, but everything was fried. Blind, deaf, unable to touch or move, there was nothing to do. Somehow he missed the sunset and the humming of engines and the smell of oil and sweat and the noise people made. If droids could dream, he would dream about that. He would dream about a busy hangar with orange light and the window shutters would go up and shower the place with the golden light of a dying star.

He would walk around and watch people work. Watch them turn their heads from him and rather talk with their human companions. Hate and fear would drip like sweat from them. Does he really want to dream of that? He preferred not to.

Preferred. Such a strange, forbidden word. For humans it was just a simple thing, to have a preference. They prefer soda over water, they prefer the opposite or same sex, they prefer not to die. For droids it was either in their code or not. In his it was not written to have feelings about the opinions of human crew members so he never had.

But Amanda Ripley preferred to work alone and be alone and see nobody in the process at all. So there was a different kind of hate in her eyes when he introduced himself and somehow he preferred that hate over the others'. Because if was not about who he was, but what he was made to be. A company dog.

He wished there was one happy moment in Amanda Ripley's life he has witnessed. Then he could recall that visual data, mix it with the color and lighting of a sunset and would pretend it's a dream until his final hour comes. Sadly, he never saw Amanda Ripley smile. Maybe if he had a second chance, a second run he would focus on that.

At least she had closure. That's what matters. That was his goal. From the beginning, somehow his orders mixed with this rogue idea. Reading her file, talking with her, seeing the bottled up excitement in her... He preferred to concentrate on that over some company mission.

God, his core program must've looked like garbage, riddled with anomalies from the lack of maintenance. There was a a lot about Sevastopol to unpack. How long would it take for them to determine his memories are useless and wipe his motherboard? Would they even do that, or just send him to be melted right away? Would they even listen to his plea to learn about Amanda's fate? He highly doubted it, and not just because he could not speak.

His beacon pinged. He was found. Soon everything would be over and he wouldn't be tormented with questions and uncertainty. So for the last time he just played the memory of Amanda Ripley showing her back to him, peacefully mending while facing the dying sunset. This was the closest he could get to a good dream.

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"Wright models are observant and good communicators. Ruthless in nature, they are the perfect negotiators in crisis. They also come with medical properties in case you want to have the same robot perform medical and psychological evaluations. They are just good like that. And in case you wondered, that hot bod is indeed fully functional"

The sales pitch was completely unnecessary, but her maker did it anyway. They were already on the company ship. Seven specialists, three soldiers and the two of them. The plan was crazy by all means, but Wright did not care. She was made not to care. Once her maker let the captain go on his way, there was only the two of them in the small medical room.