Pain was remarkably inconvenient.
He hadn’t been in much pain at first, but now that the adrenaline and the sedatives had worn off, he hurt. It wasn’t just the laceration across his forehead, which had stopped bleeding but was still open to potential infection if he didn’t get it bandaged. His legs ached from running. His feet hurt from running on He had a throbbing headache, likely from the sedatives wearing off or lack of water. He was pushing through it, but he wasn’t happy about it.
Another side effect of the drugs was an incomplete recall of the past day or so. He’d been captured. He’d been transferred to this new, unknown facility. That he remembered clearly. The rest was hazy but he remembered being stripped naked, medical scans, blood being drawn, and them beginning the process of surgical examination of his “brain.” There had been sirens. He’d been left alone. He’d been able to squirm his way free of the restraints, wander down the hallways, and find a gun, but by the time his mind cleared he wasn’t inside a lab. He was outside.
Or, he assumed he was outside. It looked like he was outside. But something about the location reminded him of Ash’s factory and the simulation domes that he and Cooper had been trapped in. This place was too big to be a simulation dome (he assumed, at any rate; it could have been a very large dome). But that didn’t mean it wasn’t artificial.
He had stopped to rest, contemplating the lack of buildings and the fact that he was barefoot and unclothed in an environment where being so would cause foot injuries and sunburn, when he noticed someone approaching. Someone approaching on…a horse. That was a horse, he was fairly certain. He knew what horses were, of course, but had only seem them once. They weren’t present on all Frontier planets. It was part of an attempt to combat the spread of invasive species. The woman riding the horse was armed. BT’s grip tightened on his own rifle, though he didn’t raise it.
He wondered for a moment if she’d noticed the slight metallic sheen to the otherwise red, thick blood streaking his face–oil slick, that’s what Cooper said it looked like. A mark that he wasn’t quite what his outward appearance claimed he was.
“I don’t want any trouble,” he said. Though his voice was as level as ever, the fact that he still sounded out of breath and his general physical state probably spoke to the truth of his words.
In a flash, her mechanoid mind searched for signs of humanity, as instant as a blink of an eye, as soon as she was close enough to see the blood on his skin. She’d been programmed to recognize the subtle differences between hosts and guests, human and android. But this man was well and truly a stranger, to her. Different. But most importantly, inhuman.
She pushed the hammer back into place, and re-holstered her gun, hesitating just a moment before swinging down off her horse. She eyed him, working to untie the rolled up blanket at the back of the saddle, and pulled it down to offer to him.
“It’s alright...I’m not here for trouble. Not with you. But you won’t last long out here like this.”
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