“Did you hear that?” Aiden asked, his throat strangling the question.
“Unfortunately...yeah...I did.” O’Neill’s voice didn’t sound any smoother. Ditching his impression of an ice carving, O’Neill stepped forward. “Who are you?”
The Squirrel thing’s white eye sockets remained locked on Aiden’s face. It didn’t respond to O’Neill’s movement or his question.
His body tense, O’Neill took another step closer and tried again. “What are you?”
No response.
How were they supposed to question this thing? What were they supposed to ask? Maybe start with the basics?
“The one you inhabit is called Squirrel,” Aiden said.
“That is not the existence we identify.” The robotic voice said immediately.
Aiden frowned. Existence? Did that translate to the host it occupied. “What existence do you identify?”
“We identify this existence as Thomas Acker,” the grinding, metallic voice said without moving its mouth or tongue. And the whole time, its cotton-stuffed eyes remained locked on Aiden’s face.
Aiden glanced at O’Neill. “Squirrel’s given name.” Aiden turned back to the window. “How do you know of the Acker existence?”
“We identify it from before the namespace.”
Before thewhat?
What the fuck did namespace mean?
And how had it identified Squirrel’s given name? Nobody called him Thomas. Not on the hills above Karaveht, not through the radio, not ever. The bots wouldn’t have heard the name. Could they have accessed Squirrel’s memories? But even if they had, they wouldn’t have found the name there.
So how did this thing know it?
Maybe because of the Karaveht insertion? Capland had found the mission camera footage on Nantz’s hard drive? There was video from all six crew members, each tagged with the corresponding special operator’s given name. Squirrel was listed as Thomas Acker on his footage.
Did the nanobots know about the files on Nantz’s laptop?
“We need Embray and Cap,” O’Neill said, reaching for his phone. “Maybe they’ll know how to communicate with it.”
His gaze fixed on Squirrel’s gaping mouth, Aiden called Wolf.
“Squirrel’s...talking...” Aiden said tightly, although talking didn’t quite fit.
“On my way.” The line went dead.
“It keeps identifying itself aswe.” O’Neill said, after they’d ended their respective phone calls. “Ask it what this royalweis.”
“You call yourself we,” Aiden said. “What doeswerefer to?”
“We are this existence.” That eerie, disembodied voice responded from somewhere inside Squirrel’s zombified mouth, or throat, or maybe its chest.
“What of the existence beside you?” Aiden asked. “How do you identify that existence.”
Squirrel’s head didn’t move. “We identify all existences as we.”
“A hive community?” O’Neill asked quietly. “The notes Cap found on Nantz’s hard drive mentioned he thought they were communicating telepathically.”
Telepathically. Aiden scowled. He hated that word. Although, if these things could communicate telepathically, could they do so over a distance? Could they communicate with the creatures in Nantz’s labs?
Aiden turned back to the zombified Squirrel. “Are you able to sense all of the existences you identify as we?”
