Garrick woke, and for a moment, he felt massive pain flit through every part of him. His back and stomach muscles especially seemed to be cramping up. Then there was a beep from his H.U.D. and the pain faded, his muscles relaxing.

  "Welcome to the land of the waking, Captain," Crux said." We have docked with The Sibilis, and Engineer Macdewil is trying to enter the shuttle. The Tealclaw has exploded behind us, and from my reading, very little of the ship remains. Also, the healing of your body is on track, but you would benefit greatly from more nutritious meals."

  "..."

  Garrick stared at the broken front of the cockpit, letting the wave of information wash over him. After a few moments, he took a deep breath and sighed.

  "Crux, next time I wake, give me a minute before you give me this much information," he said, as he stretched himself carefully, noting the limited movement in some parts, telling him that although he didn't feel it, Crux was right. His body wasn't done healing yet.

  "You can ignore that if something life-threatening is happening," he added quickly.

  "Yes, Captain."

  "Alright, let's see how Jack is doing. Did you communicate with them yet?"

  "No, Captain. It was somewhat… difficult to wake you, and it took thirty-three minutes. That is why we have connected with the Sibilis already."

  "Why was it difficult to wake me?" Garrick asked.

  "There was a semi-hardware contingency in the changed implant that wanted to keep you asleep while speeding up your healing process."

  Garrick frowned.

  "And you didn't know about this until it activated?"

  "Yes, captain."

  Great… so how much more is in that thing that The Tealclaw didn't find, Garrick thought.

  "Alright. Scan the implant again and find out if there's any more of these semi-hardware contingencies," Garrick said. "Connect me to Macdewil if you can."

  "Yes, Captain."

  Garrick saw the message icon appear, and it almost instantly connected.

  "Garrick!?"

  Macdewil's voice was high-strung, more so than Garrick was used of his friend.

  "I'm fine, Jack," he said. "Am I clear to open the door?"

  "Dammit, it's good to hear your voice… Give me a moment. We were trying to force our way in."

  Garrick wasn't surprised.

  "Alright, open up that broken piece of…" Macdewil said, grumbling something incoherent at the end.

  Garrick pulled the manual override on the inside of the shuttle, and the hatch door opened to give him a clear view of Majriti. Titawin's bright light illuminated the swirling mass of the gas giant, and two moons and some smaller satellite rocks were clearly visible.

  A moment later, Macdewil's suited and helmeted self appeared from the side.

  "Garrick, I really thought I'd never see that ugly mug again," Macdewil said, removing the safety tether and clicking it around a wall clamp.

  The engineer floated into the shuttle, his eyes flickering around wearily. Garrick wondered if he was looking for more bodies.

  "I'm fine, Jack," Garrick said as he clasped hands with Macdewil. "Let's go inside and see Yuri. I have much to tell you, and most of it is bad."

  Jack grimaced. "Well, I guess we have a lot of that going around."

  Garrick nodded sadly. "Alright, bring me up to speed."

  "Sure, just give me a minute to instruct the others."

  Garrick waited patiently as he listened to Macdewil tell the others to try and fix shuttle three. After a few minutes, he floated after Macdewil. Secured by the safety tether, he looked around the outer hull of The Sibilis. The stern part was massively damaged, and the pristine plates were now a blackened, damaged mess. Large holes were ripped nearby, but around one, a metallic construction was made.

  Shuttle seven was anchored to it, and he saw a few heads peak through the sapphire glass of the cockpit.

  "We've made some modifications here to make loading and unloading easier," Macdewil said. "We were actually planning on heading for the Tealclaw today… so I guess it's a good thing it got delayed a few hours."

  Garrick could hear the question, but he decided to wait with his explanation until everyone relevant was present.

  "What did Yuri and Nurse Marryland find out from Hilbert?" he asked.

  Macdewil cursed softly.

  "Besides the fact that his implant had grown like some overactive plant, rooting deeper in his brain than should be normal? Or that there's still activity in it, and we had to create a signal dampening room to be sure it couldn't connect to any systems? Or that the implant has started healing the brain tissue? Not a lot…"

  Garrick held back a curse of his own.

  "Engineer Macdewil, please give me a rundown of what has happened," he said, keeping his tone neutral.

  "Yes, Captain," Macdewil grunted.

  Garrick listened for the next few minutes as they moved through the familiar corridors of The Sibilis. He absently noted that certain parts had been repaired to contain cables and other potentially dangerous elements usually hidden behind the inner hull.

  When they almost reached the engineering bay, he'd gotten a pretty clear picture of what Yuri had found, and he didn't like it.

  Hillbert's brain was slowly healing as the implant converted all of his non-essential parts into either energy or building blocks. The rest of his body was almost disintegrating.

  Yuri and Nurse Marryland had been keeping an eye on it, but there was little they could do except stop the process.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The medbay had gotten a few moments of power, and Yuri used it to do thorough scans of Macdewil and a few others. All of their implants had changed, though not anywhere near as much as Hillbert's.

  Or mine, Garrick thought as he glanced at the small figure in his H.U.D. There was no sign of Crux having to defend against any incoming signal, and his body's recovery was still an ongoing process.

  When they finally entered the Medbay, Garrick was surprised to see how much had changed. The debris had all been removed, and a few of the machines were actually turned on. Yuri and Nurse Marryland were working around one of the analyzing machines. As they entered, both looked up, and Garrick saw the massive relief in both their eyes.

  He quickly added them to the conversation while Yuri floated forward.

  "Captain, I am incredibly happy you made it back," Yuri said. "Please tell me you know more of what is going on because what I've found out so far makes me feel like I am going crazy."

  Garrick nodded as he waved all three further into the medbay.

  "Nurse Suziki, Nurse Marryland, what I'm about to tell you needs to stay between the four of us until we understand more of what is going on. Is that clear?"

  Three pairs of eyes stared at him, two surprised and one slightly fearful.

  "Yes, Captain," they chorused.

  "Sibilis, I need you to make sure that no part of the following conversation is shared with the rest of the crew yet."

  "Yes, Captain," the calm voice of The Sibilis said.

  "Good," Garrick said as he looked at Yuri. "Can you scan my brain? It will help with my explanation."

  Yuri rolled her eyes and glared at Macdewil.

  "I can reroute a bit of energy," Macdewil said hesitantly. "But it will mean a few other things I'd planned will be postponed by a day."

  Garrick only needed a second to make up his mind.

  "Do it. This is currently one of the most important things for our continued survival," he said.

  Macdewil grimaced, and Garrick saw him switch coms and start talking. It took only a few moments before the lights on one of the nearby machines began blinking. Had there been atmosphere, Garrick knew he'd be hearing soft beeps.

  He pulled himself toward the machine, moving his helmeted head inside the square cabin. Yuri and Nurse Marryland moved to the control panel.

  "Will the helmet interfere?" he asked.

  "Not a lot, Captain. The MRI might have some dead spots, but not enough to matter," Yuri said, focused on the control panel, pressing through the options.

  Garrick waited, and a moment later, he got a warning symbol in his H.U.D. that showed he'd just been bombarded with radiowaves and magnetic fields.

  "Alright, you can… come… Oh my god!" Yuri's voice grew in pitch, and as Garrick pulled himself towards her, he saw her look up with wide-eyed fear.

  "I have contained Captain Dasbartin's control to the bare minimum," The Sibilis AI said, causing Garrick to hold back a curse. He'd forgotten about that little failsafe.

  "Captain, please explain what is happening."

  "Yes," he said as he pulled himself to the control panel to see the image of his brain.

  He'd seen it before, including the implant, but where his previous X4 implant had been small in comparison, what was now his implant rivaled the largest Y5 implants he had seen. Worse, tendrils of matter wove their wave through his brain, and although the image cut off at some point, he knew they moved all the way through his neck and into his lungs.

  Garrick sighed as he saw all three others pull themselves away from his location, looking at him as if he'd just grown a second head.

  "I'm sending you the full information right now, Sibilis, but please wait for me to explain it to the rest before sharing this with them. Crux, if you will?"

  "Sending now," Crux said.

  Garrick saw Macdewil's eyebrows shoot up to almost his hairline.

  "Captain Dasbartin's control has been restored," The Sibilis AI said almost immediately. "Chances of the Captain being compromised are deemed below one percent, making it lower than the rest of the crew."

  Garrick froze, licking his still-dry lips. "Sibilis, are you implying there is a larger than one percent chance that the crew is compromised?"

  "Yes, Captain. Adding the data you have just shared with me to what we have found of the System-AI, there is a non-negligible chance that one or more of the crew have been compromised."

  Garrick's mind spun, then he turned to Yuri.

  "Scan all people present. I want to see the current state of their implants."

  There was a moment of silence, then Yuri nodded.

  "Jack, if you would be so kind?" Garrick asked.

  Macdewil grunted and moved to the machine. "This is going to set us back weeks on the energy department," he muttered.

  Garrick didn't care for now. Time was precious, but only if they were alive.

  After three scans and a few minutes of examining the results later, the tension faded slightly.

  "Alright, let's continue with the explanation," Garrick said. "There will be time for questions after. Yuri, pull up my brain scan, please."

  Yuri's hands moved across the interface, and a moment later, the image of his brain appeared. The implant and tendrils were a bright green against the blue of his brain.

  "What you are seeing right now is what happens when the system-AI injects an automated system to hijack our implants," he said, slowly explaining what he'd learned, including the conjectures of him and Crux.

  "Although this happened after the explosion, it seems that, for whatever reason, most of this automated process is either dormant or working slowly. However, as soon as Hilbert and I came into contact with this AI, a smaller AI, more like an LLM, was either activated or uploaded, and our implants started to take over. It is unknown if the duration of contact with this system-AI or the difference between my implant and Hilbert's was the reason for our different reaction."

  "So… your implant is currently taken over by some precursor AI called Crux?" Macdewil asked very carefully. "You seem… normal. A bit less tired perhaps…"

  "No," Garrick said. "Crux is a custom version of the Y4 LLM integrated into it by the Tealclaw's LLM. The Tealclaw mainframe was spared the takeover by some quick actions of Captain Braddock, and it managed to detect and resist the attempts to integrate me into whatever the system-AI was attempting."

  He explained the rest of what had happened, ending with-

  "So, from what we can tell. Crux has complete control over the LLM, and no remnants of its software have remained. We have the full data dump that Tealclaw managed to get, including the part Crux added. I have already sent it to The Sibilis, and I'm hoping it can glean more information from it."

  "Captain, I have already gone through it and have drawn a few interesting conclusions from the data. I will need more time to try to translate the data-dump, but the rest of the information seems to facilitate your opinion. LLM Crux has successfully detected and stopped the final few physical backdoors that had remained and removed all of them, and currently, your implant is beyond what any regular Y implant is capable of. Although my information on the Z-type implants is limited, it seems to perform in that range, though it has abilities no human-made implant has."

  "Incredible," Yuri said as she leaned forward and began tapping the screen, pulling up more information. "It's actually repairing damage to your brain!"

  "It's also repairing my lungs," Garrick said.

  "So… seeing as our implants are probably compromised but dormant, can we do the same thing you did?" Nurse Marryland asked curiously.

  The others looked at her, Garrick raising an eyebrow. He knew what she meant but was curious that she was the first of the three to voice it.

  "I mean-" she said quickly, her voice rising. "- if our implants already have some automated systems in them, we need to get in control of them before we inadvertently trigger something bad. Right?"

  "Right," Garrick said as he turned to Yuri. "Which is what you three are going to be working on going forward. Find out if this is possible and how. Crux has sent all information to The Sibilis, and if you need to do experiments, let me know."

  "Interesting," Macdewil said, his eyes locked on Garrick. "Captain, no offense, but I've known you for a long time, and your distaste of anything AI and LLM is close to being ridiculous. How come you are suggesting this now…?"

  Garrick barked a laugh as he locked eyes with Macdewil. "You are suggesting I might not be the same as before?" he asked, using years of experience to stop the grin from forming.

  Macdewil nodded.

  "It's because I have little other choice," Garrick said. "If I could, I'd remove any trace of this system-AI and everything dealing with it. However, that is highly unlikely ever to be possible. The next best solution is to take what we can and learn to control it. To use it to protect ourselves and our minds."

  Macdewil was quiet for a bit, then snorted.

  "That new implant must be impressive if it managed to placate even you," he said before turning to Yuri. "Well, color me curious! Let's see what we can find!"

  Garrick held back an eye roll and pushed himself back a bit, listening to the two nurses and the engineer discuss the changes they were observing.