A quick glance around. No one. It's dead quiet here. Obverse to the chaos of mutiny outside in the corridors. In these quarters, the only sounds are me breathing and a faint hum from somewhere behind the panels - and then the muzzled click of the latch as I carefully close the door shut behind me with both hands. The room oozes hospital in all its purpose and cleanliness. Yes, I know! - It's not like the rest of the ship has much to offer in way of extravagance but, unlike the med bay, it is suffused with wear. Scratched and dented surfaces. Scuffed paint. None of that exists here. Not that these facilities are not in regular use. More often than not, this section is occupied with concentrated and determined people. People who care more about the job at hand than their surroundings. Yet, in all its white spotlessness, it must touch upon something inside of them. What would the rest of the ship have looked like by now, had it not been laid out in grey vinyl and anodized metals?

Hastily, I search the room for a loose panel or a cabinet where I can hide. Nothing. Damn it! Not even a couch to slip under. Scrambling, I draw out a stool from under a table, nearly toppling the desk, and climb it to poke at a ceiling tile to lift it up. To see if there is enough clearance up there. The cavity is crammed tight with cable trays and air ducts. No room for me there, even if the tiles could carry my weight. Frankly, I doubt they would. I look down from on top of the stool. There is a tray of scalpels down there on the desk, all shrink-wrapped for sterility. Not much of a weapon under any circumstances. Certainly not against armed, angry men.

Painfully aware that they will probably do exactly the same when they come looking for me, I crouch and put my head to the floor. Who am I kidding?! Surely, having all the time in the world, they will have a better chance of finding a hideout than me. Me, with no time at all. With my head low, I swivel frantically and follow the floor line with my eyes. If only I could find a loose tile. A doorway or an opening! Something. Anything... There! Obscured by the dental delivery! An opening in the skirting. I can see a dark line under the machinery. I get up and scurry under the cables and tubes protruding from the machine and begin to manoeuvre it away from the bulkhead. Even with wheels, it is astoundingly heavy. I manage to drag it a few centimetres from the wall but just enough for me to squeeze through.

It is not a locker as I had hoped. More a recess in the wall. Perhaps for liquid air canisters or some special machine now disposed of. Anyway, whatever was there is not there any more, leaving me with just enough room to curl up in. I sit down on the floor and draw my knees up under my chin. A narrow fit. As I scramble to draw the heavy delivery station back towards me, something falls down from somewhere on top of the surface. Shit! If they see instruments lying on the floor, they will surely know I have been in here. Make them search the room even more closely. Careful not to throw off other loose objects, I push the station out again, away from the wall. Just enough for me to get a hand out through the gap. I can see it, half-obscured by the station. It's a type of visor or protection helmet. Stretching my fingers, I can almost get to it. Not quite, though. Feeling the panic, I scrape the skin of my forearm as I grab for the visor, still well beyond my reach, and end up pushing the station further out anyway. Dear God! Back where I started. With the delivery station aslant from the wall, I get out halfway and pick up the visor. While out of my little alcove, I check the floor for other dropped instruments before I retract and heave the station close again as I get back into my little cave. Hoping. Closing my eyes trying to settle my breath. Everything is quiet.

I must have fallen asleep. I hit my head on the bulkhead as I jerk awake. How can I even doze off like that, with all the adrenaline in my body? Armed men are chasing me and I take a nap! Fuck! Suddenly morbidly amused, I get a picture of gerbils that pass out in the face of danger. Or is it possums? Never mind! It is still silent in the med bay. I wonder what awoke me? I try to peek out through the gaps behind the delivery station, holding my breath. Perhaps I can see a reflection of the room on a surface somewhere. It's not like there aren't enough mirror-polished surfaces. But, no. Nothing. It must have been a vibration in the bulkhead or perhaps just something I dreamt. I look down on the visor in my lap. It looks like a VR headset. A bit larger than the ones we use in navigation training. I turn it in my hands. There are no controls or data ports. A chevron-like logo on one side and an almost worn off logotype on the other. I drop it back into my lap and return to focusing on disturbances in the delicate hum of the room. Not a sound. There is no one here with me.

I try to move a little bit. It occurs to me that I can't sit here indefinitely. At one point or another, I have to get out of here and ultimately get off of this ship. My joints are hurting. I haven't dozed off again but I have lost all sense of time, nonetheless. I am not even certain that I can focus any better like this than I could asleep. There is a limit to how much you can concentrate, isn't there? The ship is flooding with a perpetual white light from the overhead. Everywhere. Even our cabins are never fully dark. That's why everybody here wears sleep masks at night. They lend some comfort but still not entirely leakproof. Tears at the nerves, I tell you. For all I know, it might even have played a part in this ongoing mutiny. At the thought of the sleep masks, I look down at the visor again. On a whim, I lift it up and put it over my head...

I am in the cargo bay...

I yank off the visor! In complete and utter surprise, I gasp for air. Almost choke doing so. The sensation was so real! Unreal, even. Not like projecting an image. In a flash, I was simply there. Really, really there. Apprehensively, I slowly put the visor back on my head...

I am back at the cargo bay. The sensation is complete. All-encompassing. I swear; I even seem to sense the smell of the enormous room. Oil and ozone. Intrigued, I look around. Three men are standing near the internal loading ramp some thirty meters away. Casual, with their guns slung over their shoulders. Talking. I can hear their voices but not make out what they say. I look around. Vantage point high but not in the overhead. The camera I am looking through must be up somewhere on the bulkhead. Still, a good view of the area. There are cargo crates fastened to the deck. Large, unadorned boxes held down by clamps in the floor grating. No people. Only the three mutineers discussing something in low voices.

One of them spits something out onto the deck and looks up. A piece of gum, maybe, or maybe a toothpick he'd been chewing on. Instinctively I step back and then freeze. I am in a body! This is not a surveillance camera! I actually moved inside the hold. It was I who made it move!

I look down at... myself; a body. A carapace. That is the first word that pops in my mind. A carapace. A gigantic beetle in black, shiny armour. Stabilized kevlar, it appears, interspersed with carbon fibres. I look at my fingers. Titanium? Probingly, I wriggle them. I watch fascinated as the black-anodized metal digits fidget. Feebly so, I admit. Almost, but not quite, obeying my command. Like a young boy's voice cracking uncontrollably. The skin is strangely alien, yet mine completely. Almost like caressing a lover's body; that incomparable sensation of touch from both sides of the skin. Looking back up, distracted as I am, I catch the eye of the man who had me startled before. He is looking straight at me. Squinting. Seeing. Registering.

I straighten up and begin to run. It must be the same instinct that caused me to flinch before and give away my position, to begin with. The man calls out and the others all turn towards me, their guns immediately up and ready.

If twitching my fingers was complicated, running is no less so. I stumble and topple as I try to traverse the maze of cargo crates. The tall machine I so strangely inhabit, however, magically keeps its balance. Counters my floundering, just like deeply rooted instincts keep a drunk upright. Behind me, I can sense them fanning out. Flanking me. One of them fires a strafe of shots, one round hitting my left arm. I feel the impact but no pain. More a sensation of a constant pressure being applied. A poke to remind my system of a latent malfunction. I wonder how much of that I can withstand; what will happen if they hit something vital. Then it occurs to me. They can't hurt me. Hell, I'm not even here! Passing a stack of containers, I stop and turn. Ready to take them on.

The men stop dead in their track as they clear the corner of my crate shield. Clearly stumped. Looking up at me. Immortal as I am, or feel, I now stand tall, face towards them. Firmly braced in what I hope is a threatening stance. I spread my arms, almost inviting them, and tilt my head slightly downwards. They are backing up, slowly. All have their guns raised, pointing straight at my head. Their knees bent for balance, they quietly reorganize. I am not even sure that my head is the most vulnerable part of this machine. Why not put the brain deeply within the armour? Distribute it, even. Surely they'd do that.

One of the men is speaking into his headset, clearly communicating with someone. Then! Just as they start firing, I run towards them. Two of them narrowly escape to the sides but one is caught in a head-on collision with my armoured body. I can hardly feel the impact but the blow sends him flailing like a rag doll across the deck, either dead or unconscious. Whichever, it was instantaneous.

I walk to the body of the motionless insurgent, lying twisted in an impossible pose. Sickened, I bend down and grab his rifle. It looks small in my metal hands. Small but no less grim. Believe it or not, I have never fired a gun before. Not knowing fully what to expect, I pull the trigger and fire randomly over the crates where I last saw the others. Surprisingly, I can actually sense the recoil through the remote connection. In the cargo bay, however, there is no reaction to my shooting. The remaining men must have left the area, or perhaps unimpressed by the gunfire, crouch behind the boxes waiting for backup. A good meter taller than them, I can see across the crates but not down behind them. Instead, I turn to the door where I had first seen them talking. Having only ever been here once before, I don't recall where any of the other doors lead but I think this one will take me to the main corridor towards the lab stations and the bridge. They might have gone that way for reinforcement. Does it even matter? This machine outmatches them. All of them.

There is no one in the hallway. They must have retreated to the adjoining rooms or gone further up, towards the bridge. Fortifying. How many are they? Five? Fifteen? Fifty? What did they do to the loyal crew? To the captain? Poor Iain is dead! That much I know. He was sitting right next to me in the navigator's station when they shot him... Argh!! An abrupt jolt runs through me like an electric shock. Very brief but leaving behind a sickening sensation. Disorientated, I suddenly wonder what they will do to me if they find me? Aware of how vulnerable my physical body is, I grab at the visor to take it off. Nothing! My robotic arms move, not my own. I can't distinguish between muscle and servo! The sense of invincibility is quickly replaced with one of sheer panic. The nausea from the shock is met by an unfamiliar, sudden sense of breathtaking claustrophobia.

I begin to run. The med bay is up towards the bridge. I must get there before they find me. The real me. The visor didn't belong in the med bay. It must have been left there by someone in for treatment. If that someone is a mutineer and he puts two and two together, remembering that the visor was left in the med bay, they will certainly search the room. Find me. Then what?

Which one is it? That one?! No. There? This one! I stumble through the door into the surgery, practically skating across the floor as I enter; metal feet against metal tiles, clawing for purchase. They are already there! Fuck! I don't know how many they are. Too many. One has my body pinned firmly to the ground, face down and still with the visor, holding a gun to the back of my head. I don't remember his name but I think he is foreman of one of the mining teams. A huge man, easily twice my size. He's got his knee in my back but I don't feel his weight on me. Why don't I register it? It occurs to me that perhaps the electric shock I felt outside in the halls, was the real me being subdued. I look more dead than alive.

"Deactivate! Now!"

That is all he says. He looks threateningly at me in my towering but powerless machine. Then repeats the order. Louder this time. But I don't know how... I try to speak. To tell them. But nothing comes out. Either the robot doesn't have a speaker or I don't know how to operate it. I just stand there. A statue. A vanquished giant.

"If you don't deactivate, I fucking will!"

I don't know how to comply and I don't know how to tell him that I don't. I move my hands in an attempt to signal my bewilderment but overshoot my movements completely and immediately everybody shouts and call out, several drawing their guns at me - my machine counterpart. Then a shot! I can feel something snap inside me. An umbilical cord; a puppet string. Something intangible. Gone. I can see and hear them but I cannot move. A sudden sensory overload so complete that the nausea is almost numbing in itself. But I don't fall.

"For chrissake, Larsson! Why didn't you just remove the controller? We're out of navs!"

"You can't!" He holsters his gun. "Coms are queued. The exo would strike out flushing the buffer."

"Surely, once she's disconnected the exo stops. No?"

"I suppose... But not immediately! I couldn't take that chance."

He stands up and looks down on my body. Then buttons his holster and leaves.

They have all left the med bay now. I just stand there, frozen. Have been for a while now. Just stand there. Vision locked on my dead body lying on the floor. A gaping wound in the back of my head and the visor shattered. I can't move. Nothing works. All I have is sight and sound... and mind. Those few passive senses. Nothing else.

"Get that thing out of here! We need the surgery!"

"Aye, sir! Store or decom?"

"Store it?! Seriously? The controller is bust. Throw it out the airlock with the other bodies."

"Okay, will do sir!"

I was never particularly good at keeping time. I am now. I count seconds. My timer circuits have nanosecond precision but I have some capacity for abstraction left in me, so I try to just count whole seconds. It's been 1,275,264,345 seconds since they jettisoned me from the mining ship. I was in space 715,392,234 seconds before I was caught by Mars' gravity and hurled into the ground; all but completely obliterated. If I had been a mathematician or a philosopher, I would have contemplated the universe as I was hanging out there. You know; thought big thoughts. Calculated infinity. But I am not a thinker. I used to be a second navigator on a regolith miner. That's it. I know stars and the simple life. Now I know time too. In fact, time is all I have left. It's been 559,872,111 seconds since I crashed here on Mars. Anyway, I presume that's where I am. None of my sensors has worked since my crash. Only the timers. If only the microcontroller in the power pack hadn't broken in my crash, I would have known how much time remains.