"Yes, I was hoping you'd caught that. Celestine is the one who made us all immortal, by creating mechanical prostheses and...something to do with nanotechnology I don't entirely understand. All of us were brought back from the brink of death, and...only some of us had time to consent in advance. Kit—that is, Cristián—did, I believe, as did Kolya—Nikolai." 

His pronunciation of Cristián is awkward, as though he doesn't say it much. 

Both of them notice that. "There something he prefers to be called?"

"Kit—would rather people call him Kit than try and fail to pronounce his full name, if they can't wrap their tongues around it," Martin explains haltingly.

"With Kolya, I would suggest sticking to Nikolai until he invites you to do otherwise." 

"Understood," Wrath nods sharply. (She wouldn't have presumed with Nikolai, but it's good information to have regardless.)

"Yes, yes," Avarice says, not quite dismissively - he's definitely filing that information away (and using their internal comms to make sure the others are aware of that information as well), but. "That's all very good, but it sounds like we do have hunting to do. ...Although is it really hunting if you know where your quarry is?"

"Yes, well. Therein lies the complication," Martin says in a dry tone.

"Celestine is at least as immortal as we are, although by different means—about which I know very little, before you ask. I wasn't exactly around for it." 

"A challenge..."

"So, before we get too far ahead of ourselves. Have you seen anything tried that should kill them that won't? Like...spacing them, dismemberment and then cremation, firing them into a sun...wait, nix that last one, no easy way to confirm it was successful..."

"Dismemberment works about as well as you've seen it work on Kit. Possibly even less, they're harder to injure in the first place. I haven't seen them be cremated or fired into a sun, and I have no information on whether I should expect to survive either of those myself," Martin says.

"I know I can survive hard vacuum—it was one of the first things I asked—so I'd be surprised if Celestine can't." 

"...Would you prefer them dead? To be clear, we're probably going to try anyway-"

"-honestly surprised Wrath's still here talking to us and not trying..." Avarice mumbles.

"-but it's better if we don't also have to fight you guys on it."

"You...might have to fight some of us on it," Martin admits.

"Mostly Kit, but—none of the others have ever objected to what Celestine does, as far as I know. I...won't get in your way, but there's a limit to how much I can help." 

Wrath nods. "I think we can at least temporarily disable you all if it's required. We're very good at what we do."

"—oh, there is a. Further complication."

Martin hesitates.

"As I mentioned, I don't know very much about how our immortality works. Celestine is the only one who fully understands all the modifications they've made to us, and the only one who can repair us if something goes wrong." 

Avarice and Wrath are quiet for a long moment, looking to each other.

"We could try to beat the answers out of them," Avarice comments. "And it's not like Pri doesn't have a good learning curve on tech she never had to deal with before."

"How often have things gone wrong?"

He thinks about it. 

"I needed a lot of maintenance in the first few decades after my mechanisation, but it's tapered off since then, and the others seem to need even less upkeep. I'd say...most of the time, when one of us ends up in the lab it's because of something Celestine wants to improve rather than something that's broken per se." 

"...That's good to know."

"Nice to hear you're better put together than us!"

Martin fidgets, tapping the fingers of one hand with his thumb.

"Well, I'm not claiming it's a perfect job or that there's nothing I'd like improving, but I'm...functional. Are your modifications not so much?" 

"We're functional, but Sloth sleeps like...ninety percent of the time, Gee's only alive because Pri managed to patch her to not need a constant IV drip of nutrients, and E...well."

"They weren't that interested in their proof of concepts being things like 'pain free' and 'functional'."

"Then—what were they going for? If you don't mind me asking." 

"I wasn't exactly...with it. For most of the time I was there."