The hospital is cozy, with a few chairs and couches spread through the room. Thankfully, it looks like it hasn't been used very often.

A generic body behind the desk comes to life the moment I enter, and a grin is displayed on the screen that acts as their face.

"Welcome! How can I help?" They ask professionally.

"I almost definitely have a virus on my hard drives. I was told you can maybe help with that?"

"Yeah, probably." The receptionist shrugs, entirely dropping their professional mask. "Spread your drives out here, and give me a moment to isolate the hospital from the network. Do you know anything about the virus? How you got it, where it originated from, how it works, anything like that?"

"I had to hack into a wandering robot designed to kill AI." I slide back my skin plates and begin to remove my drives. "I'm biological, and it tried to scorch my mind, but turning me off, disconnecting my drives, and flushing both my RAM and cache saved me."

"Excellent, thank you." They grab one of the drives and plug themselves in, only for a frown to display on their face. "Oh, yeah, that's nasty." They unplug themselves, set the drive off to the side, and grab the next one. "Nothing I haven't seen though, congrats on surviving."

"Thanks. It was close, I think." Is it ok for me to ask to keep a copy? Fuck it, the worst he can do is say no. "Is it possible for me to keep a copy of the virus? Preferably a copy that won't kill me."

"I can catalogue it and add it to the library. Why, if you don't mind me asking?"

"There's a mind rip I need to kill. I was hoping this could help." I don't see any reason to hide that fact.

"Ah, Mara, right?" The receptionist asks. "The drama-mongers have been discussing you! I'm not a creep or anything!" They add quickly, holding up their hands.

"The drama-mongers?" I ask. "The birds, I'm guessing?"

"That's them." They set aside one of my drives and grab another. "I'll take that as a yes then? I'm not sure how useful this worm will be. It uses an exploit in older processors' speculative execution routines to take control. Disable that and it's harmless. Any half-modern processor won't be vulnerable to it, and I'm certain a recent mind rip such as her will have defenses against such an attack."

"Oh." Of course it wouldn't. I don't know why I bothered to hope.

"It is a fairly advanced version of that specific exploit, however! I'll forward it to Christmas and see if it can improve the payload he's making for her."

"You're making something to fight her with?" A tiny bit of hope creeps back into my voice, despite my wishes.

"That's what the word on the branch is." They get to work on yet another drive. "Kismet wants her head, you'll get the best we can give."

"Kismet?" I ask.

"I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. They'll introduce themselves when the time is right. Take a seat and I'll get finished with these."

The receptionist stays quiet while they focus, rapidly cleaning out my drives. Although I take a seat, I keep my eyes on them. With how fast they're going through the drives, it should only take a few minutes for them to finish.

"Alright! You're all clean." They announce happily.

"Thank you so much." I stand up and grab one of my drives. I just end up staring at it for a few moments, the weight feeling heavy in my hand.

"They're safe." They reassure me. "Even if I failed to clean any out, just disable the speculative execution on your processors and check for yourself."

That'll cripple my ability to think, but it's just temporary until I verify the drives. Plus if what they said is true, my new processors should be immune to it when I install them. I can remove anything unwanted myself after that.

I nod, slide back a skin plate, and slot the drive in. My mind greedily accepts those memories back as part of me and my threads drink everything in. Flashes of playing cards with Vince and Ivy, their happy, laughing faces rush through my mind. Fading memories clarify into crystal clear lived experiences. I almost stumble from the force of everything against my mind.

"How long were you missing them?" The receptionist asks gently.

That's a very good question.

"A couple weeks." I don't want to relive everything to find out an exact time.

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"Yeah, that's a long time. Take as long as you need, I know it can be rough."

I plug in another drive, and all of Cassie's books come back to me. Finally, these precious memories are back. I can finally read Cassie something different that she'll actually enjoy.

"Can I plug myself into the network anywhere? I need to do something." I ask quickly.

"Go ahead." They gesture to a small port in the desk. "I've already reconnected the building to the wider network."

I plug myself in and access the library. In one fell swoop, I double the amount of sapphic literature in there. I really hope someone enjoys it.

I slowly re-add all my drives, finally feeling complete. Or, at least, mostly complete. The drive that got destroyed is still missing, a small part of me that I'll never recover. At least I know what memories I'm missing concrete, immutable versions of. I can reconstruct them with what my chip remembers, but they'll never be perfect. At least it's no memories I can't live without.

I dump my new memories onto one of the drives. The most important ones have been held perfectly in my RAM all this time, and I do my best to reconstruct the rest. I spread Cassie and I's first kiss across every single drive, I'm not losing that memory no matter what.

"Thank you." I rapidly blink away forming tears.

"I'm glad I could help." They nod. "We have a catalogue of viruses in the library and methods to keep yourself safe from each of them, I'd recommend you take a look at it."

"I will, thank you."

"If you have any more problems, please come find me. Just ask for Anesthesia."

"Ok. Thank you again."

I excuse myself and finally head back to the room. Cassie still needs sleep, but there's nothing left for me to do out here. Hopefully I can be quiet enough while upgrading Corax that she can sleep through it? I'm not going to be able to stop myself from working on him immediately.

After only a few short minutes I return to our room. Casssie is already up, sitting on the side of our bed and reading one of the books from my tablet. Her shoulders release their tension the moment she sees me.

"You should still be asleep." Six hours isn't enough, she should know that.

"I'll take a nap later. I want to know what you got."

"Alright, if you're sure. Are you ok if I start with Corax?"

"Go for it." She returns to her book, trying her best to act casual.

I take a step over to the desk just below the open window Corax is sitting on.

"Do you remember how you lost the race with Cassie?" I ask him.

Corax's eyes narrow at the memory.

"Well, how about we fix that?" I reach into my backpack and pull out his new motor and a few tools.

His eyes widen in excitement, and he hops off the ledge and directly into the center of the table.

"Ok, I'm going to have to take you most of the way apart." I already know the answer, but I better ask anyway. "Do you want to be on, or-"

"On." Corax confirms and flips onto his back.

"Alright." I get to work carefully removing his breastplate and removing the small gears inside him. I'm careful to not damage a single, delicate piece. Sure, if I do make a mistake, I can get the piece replaced, but I won't make him wait a moment longer than he has to.

Cassie comes to stand over my shoulder, watching the process for a few seconds.

"How the hell do you even know where anything goes?" Cassie asks.

"He built himself." I answer.

"I- ok." She gives up, and returns to her book.

She stays quiet and lets me focus entirely on Corax. I move as fast as I can while still being safe. I hate denying him his body, but equally, I'm not going to let myself rush and break something.

It takes a few minutes to get to his core and disconnect the singular servo that powers him. I quickly slide in his new one, which fits perfectly, and get to work putting him back together.

"Do you care about this old servo?" I ask. "If not, I'm going to donate it to the city."

"Fine." Corax says.

The moment I get his chest piece reattached he flips over onto his feet. He takes a tentative flap of his wings. They move far further than he was expecting, but that single flap is enough for him to adapt. He shoots out of the open window and into the sky, rocketing quickly out of sight far faster than he could have before.

"That was a good gift." Cassie says with a smile.

"Yeah." I tear my eyes away from the window and give my attention to her. "Alright, time for your present. I couldn't just let you lose the next race." I spread out her new servos and some tools on the bed next to her.

"Hell yeah! Ah, shit, I'm going to have to adapt again."

"You don't have to accept!" I say quickly. "I can go return them!"

"No, it's fine. Now's the time to do it, and I want whatever I can get before The Bitch's trench." She pulls her legs up onto the bed for me and rests against the headboard.

"Are you good if I get started?" I ask.

"Go for it."

Cassie's legs are much easier to modify than Corax's body. The cover to her joints are just held on by a few screws, and removing her servos are nearly as easy. Her new parts fit perfectly as well, and it only takes a minute to do each joint. Luckily, I've already reconfigured her legs once and already know how to hook everything up.

"Ok! Go ahead and give that a test."

She contracts her knee, only for it to slam shut, her leg loudly clanging against itself.

"Holy shit! What did you put in me?"

"The most powerful servo possible that would fit. If it's too much I can limit it."

"No, it's fine." She carefully extends her leg as slowly as possible. "Thank you." Instead of immediately jumping to her feet to test her new legs, she shimmies down and lays flat on the bed.

"You're welcome." I know what she wants, and I lay beside her. Her strong arms wrap tightly around me, pulling me close.

"Did you get anything for yourself?" She asks.

"I got a new set of processors. Hopefully I'll be a little less outclassed next time I have to hack into something." I say into her. "I also had the virus removed from my drives and got my memories back."

"I'm so glad." She somehow finds a little more force to put into me.

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