For a while, they disappeared into the almost-completed WindWalker800, and Mech6.0 could only catch glimpses of them through the cockpit windows. She noticed they were both smiling.
Dataran took Miko through parts storage, the painting room, even past the android charging docks, and while Mech6.0 couldn’t hear them, she frequently recognized the dimples of his laughter and noticed how his gazes grew more daring, settling on the girl with increased frequency, just as her gazes settled on him.
By the time Dataran was opening the gate and ushering Miko up onto the platforms that hung suspended over the water supply and refueling tanks, Mech6.0 realized that she had stopped working.
She turned her sensor toward the ship’s paneling that had only two screws still fastening it to the hull, then glanced at her brethren beside her. They all had at least three panels already taken down.
This was very odd. Not only her strange fascination with the humans, but that it could overpower her need to complete her task. Perhaps something really was wrong with her.
Yes, she would have to check in with maintenance after this shift.
Then, as she was removing her first panel, someone yelled. Mech6.0 turned in time to see one of the enormous cranes tilt beneath a too-heavy load, its outstretched arm swaying dangerously for a moment that stretched out for ages before it found the tipping point. The enormous metal arm fell toward the suspended platforms, bolts snapping and cables whipping into the air.
Still on the hanging walkway, Miko screamed.
Dataran pushed her out of the way.
The arm of the crane cracked against his head, the sound reverberating right into Mech6.0’s hard plastic shell. He was unconscious before his body fell into the oil vat below.
Miko screamed again, clinging to the walkway railing. The crane landed hard, and one of the cables flew loose from the ceiling. The platform careened to one side, but the remaining cables held.
Mech6.0 did not take the time to process the situation or calculate the best course of action—she was already rolling toward the containers. Around her, people yelled and machinery screeched and halted, footsteps thundered and the rickety walkway trembled overhead. Someone called for a ladder or a rope, but Mech6.0 already had her magnets activated to collect the panel screws, and with single-minded precision, she found herself climbing the side of the enormous tank, her grippers spread out against its metal sides, heaving her body upward. It was an awkward climb, one her body was not made for, as her treads banged against the tank and her arms flailed for the next purchase. Her joints strained under her weight. But then she was hauling herself up onto the ledge, which was just barely wide enough for her to stand on.
The vat of oil was black as the night sky without stars. Black and terrifying.
Mech6.0 tipped herself over and went in.
She sank fast, and though she immediately turned her sensor light on to full brightness, it did little to help her. Extending her arms as far as they would go, she searched the bottom of the tank, knowing that he was here somewhere, he was here, he was—
Here.
She tightened her grippers and dragged her body toward him through the thick oil. It was seeping through her paneling now, blocking her input plugs, glugging into the charging inlet. But she had him.
She wrapped her arms around his torso and heaved him upward. He was heavier than she expected and it occurred to her that the bolts connecting her arms to their sockets might not hold, but she kept going. Finding the tank’s wall, she planted her prongs against the side again and started to climb. There was no light anymore, no senses at all but the sound of her grippers and the tread bumping into the wall and the weight of his body pressing down onto her as she forced both of them up, up, up …
They broke through the surface. Sound crashed into her, more screams and gasps. Then someone was lifting him away, and Mech6.0 barely managed to collapse sensor-facedown onto the tank’s ledge before her programming recognized self-destructive behavior and killed the power to her limbs.
She lay there, hollow and helpless, as the oil dripped off her sensor. She began to make out human shapes on the platform and her audio picked up on a discussion of towels and air passageways and lungs and blood on his head and it seemed to take so very long, the oil dulling all her senses, but then he was coughing and vomiting and breathing and the humans were rejoicing and when they had finally wiped enough oil from his face that it was safe for him to open his eyes, Dataran looked around at all the humans first. And then, for the very first time, he looked at her.
*
Dataran had been taken away to a hospital and Mech6.0 was in the android maintenance office, her limbs being rubbed clean—or as clean as possible—by a man in green coveralls who kept shaking his head.