Phantom sensation. That was what it was. Phantom sensations from limbs Hundred did not have. Had Hundred ever had any limbs? She shook her head like a pack animal. Of course she had limbs. She had the same arrangement of limbs as most ambulatory, sentient species of the galaxy. This wasn't anything new. After such an intimate utilization of the Dust it was always difficult to reorient her senses with the rote material. Hundred placed a hand on the bulkhead to her left, pausing in her progression. She was not dizzy. The feel of the solid section of superstructure was steadying regardless. Hundred closed her eyes and swallowed. It did not normally take her this long to adjust. But then, she had rarely ever attempted such an expansive test of her Dusts' capacities before. Hundred hummed thoughtfully to herself. Stead. Certain. Hundred continued to the control room.
Looking around the sepulchral chamber Hundred frowned. There was a story here. Violence always had a tale to tell. The Dust tasted of the blood. It told her that it was made mostly of iron. She hummed again. She was not terribly interested in what the blood had to say. Give her the ions of computational systems over the carbon of the dead. Hundred assessed her Dust reserves. She was spread thin. Her tactics seemed successful, but it had left her greatly diminished in reach and grasp. But she had enough.
Moving towards one of the terminals, Hundred extended her hands over the control pylon like a shaman of some failed culture. Flexing her fingers the Dust descended upon the terminal, slithering between casings and keys, running along it's internal circuitry similar to, but much more carefully than, it had with the main lines. As it moved along the circuits, identifying it's structure, motes of Dust coalesced at certain junctures, building microprocessors to interface with the ships systems in novel and useful ways for Hundred's purposes. Building her own access point Hundred allowed her systems to connect with the terminals data. A jolt.
Hundred physically jumped, almost imperceptibly as she connected to the system. Also an unusually heightened response. Hundred tasked some SIs to perform a diagnostic on her internal interface hardware and software. Her attention turned to the data. It was beautiful. It was shoddy. It was dense and shallow. It was familiar. Hundred's frown deepened. Familiar? Why? She dove deeper into the terminals backlog of data. No, it wasn't it's contents. That was as the Syndarian had described, like a river frozen mid flow, it was an exquisite, curving collection of data that swirled and shaped itself in an almost illogical pattern as it had shifted as if in response to the intrusion of their attempted access. Hundred could spend months pouring over the dynamics of the way the code transposed itself. But that was not what had garnered her attention. It was not the data in the system. It was not the river. It was the riverbed. The architecture of the system. Sophisticated yet simple. Not the frankensteinian monstrosities of most modern system design, meant for high fungibility and user friendliness. This was custom work, yes, but it was not just designed, as most custom jobs were, for personal tastes and efficiency. It was not an efficient system. It served it's purpose perhaps, but that seemed like a necessary contrivance. All of the systems and subroutines afforded to ship function seemed ancillary. The system seemed designed for massive transference of data. More communications hub than ship system. Like a intragalactic server system. That was what was so familiar. It was like her own systems, back when she was still a branded slave-spawn of the Consortium. The massive processing power distributed over such a large area. Hundred had used them to generate the compression necessary to produce emergent AI. But this system was not the same. Similar, yes, but Hundred's systems were more foundry space. This system seemed smaller, more streamlined. Like a private repair slip.
Something blared in the back of Hundred's mind, clawing at her attentional resources. Hundred hummed thoughtfully and pulled away from the system. She was slightly surprised to see it was not her diagnostic tasked SI, but rather her biostatic overwatch systems which drew her attention. A backlog of attenuated requests for system maintenance greeted her. Hundred frowned more. Tissue death. Inflammation. Overextension of ligatures and a dozen other anomalous reports of damaged sensory equipment and necessary physical repair and calibration events. Hundred hummed a soft growl, her systems could not self-repair, at least not at a rate that was satisfactory.
"Medic. I require your aid." She said simply over the comm. Breathing out, Hundred shut her eyes again. The Dust remaining around her person obeyed new commands. The fluid layer of Dust that constituted the majority of her suits frenzied into motion. Disengaged from their normal non-newtonian behavior, the Dust flooded to the suit seals, unraveling the seams. Her suit seemed to slit along her flanks, peeling and slithering away from her body, curling up into itself, it folded into her gloves, boots, and mantled collar, exposing her flesh for examination.
Mostly naked now, Hundred turned her attention back to the terminal in front of her. The doctor had all the access to her body that he would need for basic medical treatment, she trusted the man to do his job. Her focus was not on whatever he would do to her. Instead she started to dissect the backlog of system behavior in the terminal, trying to parse what had been done to it preceding the teams arrival. Some artifacts of what had happened aboard the ship must remain in the record, Hundred would have them. She let the q-bits fill her processors and brain space. She hummed thoughtfully.
