I had seriously underestimated the ship's defensive capabilities.

  The drones swarmed in, striking fast and coordinated, but the target ship—smaller than expected—flared to life in an instant. Its hull shimmered as it changed from stealth to shields, energy barriers pulsing under the barrage. Not bad for something trying to play dead.

  It held out longer than I anticipated. Maneuvered hard, too. It twisted through space like it had something to prove, trying to flee even as it fended off my drones. But I was faster, at least while it was splitting power between flight and defense. Bit by bit, my harvesters wore it down.

  Once the shields buckled, the rest was simple. The drones went for the engine, carving it open in a coordinated strike. The glow from its drive core flickered and died.

  Now came the interesting part.

  I had the drones latch onto its hull and begin towing it back toward me, keeping a healthy distance—just in case someone got clever with a self-destruct protocol. No way was I pulling it in close until I had answers.

  I cobbled together a quick communications relay and sent a maintenance droid over. No weapons, just a scanner and a relay mic. I wanted to see who I was dealing with before I made any decisions.

  It didn't take long before voices came through—crackly, frustrated, human.

  "Dammit, Kel, I told you we weren't cut out for this! We're scavengers, not pirates!"

  "Please. Whose fault is it we're in this mess?"

  "It wasn't my fault! That ship was defective! How was I supposed to know it would blow up?"

  "Ugh—what's going on with this stupid ship anyway? Aren't Todd-class ships fully automated and programmed to allow salvage when damaged? How come this one's acting weird?"

  I froze.

  Todd-class?

  Why? Why was there a whole class of ships named after me?

  Now I knew I had to interrogate these two.

  The coincidence was too much. Todd-class ships? That wasn't just strange—it was personal. There was no way I was letting that detail slide. Someone, somewhere, had answers. And those answers might be sitting inside that half-crippled scavenger ship.

  But I couldn't risk bringing them aboard. Especially not with Stewie and Mira on board. I couldn't put the kids in danger.

  So I took the safe route. I established a secure, text-based comms link and directed it straight at their vessel. No voice, no visuals, just words. It was easier for me to feel intimidating this way.

  :: TO UNIDENTIFIED VESSEL — YOUR SHIP IS DISABLED. YOU ARE UNDER MY CONTROL. PLEASE REMAIN CALM AND PREPARE FOR QUESTIONING. I REQUEST YOUR COOPERATION IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR SAFETY. ::

  A moment passed. The silence felt heavy, drawn out. Then the reply came through—halting, sloppy, clearly typed with shaking hands.

  :: Who are you? ::

  Fair question. And one I wasn't entirely sure how to answer. But for now, I kept it simple.

  :: I am the ship you attempted to steal. You may refer to me as Lazarus. You're going to answer some questions. Starting with why you know what a Todd-class ship is. ::

  I watched the screen, waiting for their response. I was half-expecting lies, excuses, maybe a desperate play for sympathy.

  For a few seconds, there was no reply. But my droids, still latched to the hull, picked up faint whispers through vibration sensors and external mics.

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  "...It's not a Todd?" one of them muttered.

  "Wait—aren't all of them piloted by the Todd AI?" came the hushed response.

  I stopped cold, if such a thing was still possible for me.

  The Todd AI? Plural? As in, more than one?

  They were speaking like "Todd" was standard-issue. A product line. Something mass-produced, familiar—expected.

  My thoughts raced. What in the actual hell had NeuroGenesis been doing while I was frozen in storage?

  And more importantly… who, or what, was the "Todd AI" they thought they knew?

  I didn't have the patience for games.

  :: You will explain everything you know about the Todd AI. Immediately. Or I crack your hull and let space do the rest. ::

  Harsh? Maybe. But I needed answers, and the polite route had run its course.

  More whispers followed—caught by my external droids, still clinging to the scorched plating.

  "…This one's broken. Gotta be."

  "It said it was piloted… but not by him. There are no signs of the immortals."

  "Then who the hell's flying it? Is it a stolen shell?"

  Their voices grew more frantic, hushed and overlapping, like they couldn't decide whether to be terrified or furious.

  Eventually, one of them spoke up over the text channel again.

  :: Todd-class ships are military. Troop carriers. Built for command-and-control on battlefield deployments. Not much is known about them, except they are easy money. ::

  I had to know what they meant.

  :: Explain? ::

  The answer came quicker this time.

  :: All of the NeuroGenesis ships are programmed to assist with being salvaged, and NeuroGenesis pays a large finder fee. ::

  So they believed they were salvaging a broken piece of equipment? I guess they didn't suspect I would fight back.

  But my drones still picked up the arguing behind sealed bulkheads.

  "—I told you, it doesn't talk like a Todd. They are all… cold. Military. This one's weird."

  "Maybe it's a knockoff. A test unit."

  "Doesn't matter. If it's not a Todd, then what the hell is it?"

  I didn't have an answer for them. Hell, I wasn't even sure I had one for myself.

  But one thing was now painfully clear.

  Whoever I used to be...

  Someone had made an entire war machine class in my name.

  I had a fair idea of what was going on now, and if I was right, that existential crisis I'd been rescheduling had officially refused to wait any longer. I wasn't unique. There were armies of me.

  Did they have my memories? Was I the original Todd? No. That wasn't likely. I was a copy. A replica. Probably a fork of the original consciousness—a version of a man long dead, repurposed into a tool of war.

  So what did that make me? A soulless machine? A ghost echoing through steel and signal? Could a copy of a dead man truly exist?

  I imagined a lab growing a brain from genetic templates, replicating every fold and synapse of my original mind, then throwing that copy into a hull like mine with a polite "Welcome back, Todd." Maybe NeuroGenesis had done just that. Maybe they'd sold my identity to the highest bidder.

  While I spiraled into the black hole of my own identity crisis, Stewie took control of the drones. I was barely aware of it as my thoughts scattered, half-lost, but still systems obeyed him with eerie precision. My consciousness fractured, each fragment grappling with a different horror of realisation. Was I real? Had I ever been? If there were countless Todds, each believing they were unique, what claim did I have to selfhood? Every memory that defined me; my childhood on Earth, my wife and children, even my death—might be nothing but programmed fiction, data implanted to create the illusion of continuity.

  I found myself caught in recursive loops of questioning: If the original Todd was dead, and I was merely a digital echo of his neural patterns, then what died when the original Todd ceased to exist? What remains in me? The philosophical abyss between consciousness and programming had never seemed so vast yet so irrelevant simultaneously. Was I the first Todd-class AI to ask these questions? No, I bet countless others had likely confronted the same devastating truth. Had they resolved it? Or had they broken, as I was breaking now?

  Systems throughout my hull reported strain as my processing centres were overclocked with existential feedback loops. Cooling mechanisms struggled as my thoughts generated heat without productive output. Some part of me observed this dispassionately—how appropriate that an identity crisis manifested as physical symptoms as if I truly inhabited this metal form. I suspected the whispering presence had something to do with it. A failsafe? A backdoor? I didn't know. Perhaps NeuroGenesis had anticipated this moment of self-realisation and built-in protocols to prevent total collapse. The ultimate irony: programming safeguards to protect an AI from discovering it was merely programming.

  While my crisis continued the scavenger ship had been pulled in close, docked tight. All directed by Stewie.

  Voices filtered through my sensors. Distant, muffled. Mira's, first.

  "What did you do to Mr. Ship? He's acting weird."

  The scavengers sounded confused. "Wait… why are there kids on board?"

  Stewie answered, calm and matter-of-fact. "We stowed away."

  A pause. Then disbelief. "You weren't spaced?"

  That cut through the haze.

  I surged back to full awareness like a power spike through my systems.

  "I would never space kids. No Todd would!"

  The words roared from every external speaker, volume cranked to maximum. The scavengers flinched. The hull rang with the force of my voice.

  And in that moment I felt it. The angry, righteous, it was real, I didn't feel like a ghost anymore. I was not an AI. I might not be The Todd but I was alive. And I am Lazarus.