Arty nodded and took a slow breath when Hardison repeated the nickname. He remembered the phone call, the emotions on both ends of the line and the name the woman on the other end had used. Just focusing on the memory again makes his chest tighten and the world around them seem to close in, which for a mn who spent his entire life in small spaces was an unsettling new fear to feel so strongly.

"Your name is Hardison, isn't it? Those texts are better forgotten, for your sake." The last bit is added with a pained voice but Arty pulled himself back together once he had a moment to focus.

"I believe so. The place I come from was fast becoming this in the least. The list of treasonable offenses aboard the Aspiration were growing every day." With every execution and attack. What was permissible one day could be illegal the next and there was no statute of limitations for the High Council's 'peacekeepers' and guards.

"If that is true, then what you saw... is close to the last thing I remember from home. I am unsure if this is part of the High Council's doing, if this is even real, or if what they told me here is true and this body is not my own. But with the technology available to them, I can not imagine they would find usefulness in bringing minds to clones that would be easier to mould from scratch."