11. JUST SLEEPING?
After knocking his knuckles against the bulkhead a few times for the sake of appearances, Rob +Azvel pulled back the curtain of the girl’s cabin.
— May I come in? — +Azvel inquired, just in case.
No one answered him.
Lana Kubysh was in her cabin, inside the cocoon of a cozy beige sleeping bag, her eyes closed, with the serene expression of a peacefully sleeping person on her face. The girl breathed evenly and did not look at all as the commander had recently described her: «with a stone expression… and unseeing eyes staring into the void.»
«She’s just sleeping…» — thought +Azvel. — «Sleeping peacefully…»
This was strange. He remembered himself right after the Integration. Back then, in the first few minutes, he couldn’t even control the movements of his hands, and his facial expressions lived a life of their own, entirely beyond the control of his consciousness. This lasted for quite a long time, until his second hypostasis was forcibly synchronized with the first. And there could be no question of any serene sleep back then, during the difficult minutes of struggle, in the critically important period of suppressing the sub-creature’s will (since the preservation of his first hypostasis directly depended on it)! Lana, however, was simply sleeping.
— Just sleeping? — he whispered in surprise. And what should he do now? Try to wake her up and ask for her Primordial Name? And what if she is still Lana Kubysh and no one else? Then he would be the one with problems, and the commander would be the one worrying about his mental state. Or should he wait a little longer? Maybe her Integration truly ended in failure, and he wouldn’t have any assistant now?
«It’s probably best to wait, let her wake up on her own,» — +Azvel decided. He had already reached out his hand, intending to draw the curtain and quietly withdraw, but the girl suddenly opened her eyes and, sweeping a contemptuous gaze over him, uttered:
— «Hold on, Rob… or whatever you’re called now? +Azvel?! You are +Azvel now, right? I’m not mistaken, am I?»
— N-no… — Rob +Azvel recoiled. More precisely, he abruptly straightened up and involuntarily pushed off the bulkhead with his hand too hard. In zero gravity, any overly sharp, disproportionate effort can always lead to abrasions and bruises. And, as a consequence, to the breaking of fragile equipment by a body accelerating like a projectile. Mass inertia hasn’t been canceled. Fortunately, this time there were no serious consequences. He spun like a top and slammed the back of his head into a spare, rolled-up sleeping bag lashed to the wall.
Quickly orienting himself, Quilly yelped and caught the girl’s eyes. She had already unzipped her sleeping bag and now, it seemed to Rob, was trying to get out of it uncertainly, as if she were learning to move in zero gravity all over again.
He remembered how, in the first seconds of awakening, he himself had struggled with this uncomfortable, clumsy, meat body of a human. It was a hundred times harder for him back then than it was for her now, because he had been on Earth, feeling the serious embrace of the great Cradle.
«She’s in zero gravity, it’s easier for her,» — thought +Azvel. And if she was poorly managing a body that was still alien to her, it meant the Integration had indeed happened. And, by all appearances, successfully. But then where was that contempt in her voice coming from? He wasn’t her enemy, was he?
— State your Primordial Name! — +Azvel shouted hoarsely, demanding confirmation of her essence.
— «I’m Lana,» — the girl answered calmly with a crooked smirk. — «What’s wrong, Doctor? Have you forgotten my name?..»
— «What’s going on here?»
Dmitriev’s sharp voice snapped +Azvel out of his stupor.
> ⚠️ **ENTITY STATUS: CRITICAL INTEGRATION ANOMALY.**
How amusing it is to watch the panic of the so-called «higher intelligence» when it encounters the unpredictability of protein-based matter. +Azvel considered himself the perfect infiltrator. He expected the Russian girl to writhe in convulsions, crushed by the power of the System.
But she was simply sleeping. And that crooked smirk of Lana’s… Oh, protein-based reader, my telemetry is recording a critical failure in the Insertion protocol. Something has gone completely off the Architects’ plan. Lana knows her executioner’s name, but refuses to state the alien’s Primordial Name.
And right then, Commander Dmitriev bursts onto the scene, not even suspecting yet that his station has turned into an incubator for monsters of the Underside. Keep reading. Let’s see how +Azvel wriggles his way out of this digital trap.
