Someone knocks on the warlock's door, and she opens it and finds that it is not the human, but her medical officer.
"Evaluation day?" She asks, her mood sinking.
"Evaluation day." The doctor confirms. "May I come in?"
"Of course."
The warlock sits on her bed, grabbing a large stuffed shark from among her things and clutching it close to her chest, resting her chin on its snout.
"Relax, sweetie." The doctor says, trying to reassure her. "We do this every four months, you know it's not a big deal."
It is a big deal, because this is the part where the doctor asks her questions and most of them are easy but some of them are hard and the doctor always just nods blankly at whatever she says and writes it down, never telling her if she's behaving normally or if she's going to be decommissioned for suspected possession risk.
"We'll start with the systems checks, okay? There's an asteroid field to our starboard side, tell me how many objects are within your range."
She closes her eyes, and lets the line between her and the ship and the demon blur.
"Twenty-three." She says.
"Mhm. Destroy the object at 290 -051 368, please."
The ship pinpoints the relative coordinates, she gives the go ahead, and her demon crushes the asteroid like it's a glass bauble.
Blood trickles from her nose and drips onto the shark.
"Destruction confirmed, thank you. You may return to your body."
The medical officer offers her a tissue to wipe away the blood.
"Now, I have just a few questions for you about the past few months." She says, and the warlock squeezes the shark tighter because this is the awful part. "Have you been eating?"
"Yes."
"Exercising?"
"I... take walks." The warlock says.
"How often, and what distance?" The doctor asks, writing on her terrible notepad.
"A few times a week, and I don't know. I just wander."
"Wander where?"
The warlock wishes she had a good answer. There's nothing wrong with just walking around aimlessly, but everything she does needs to be scrutinized because there's a demon in her head. It's oppressive.
"C Deck, mostly. I just walk around the halls until I want to stop."
"Okay." The doctor says, and she writes in silence for a long moment. "There was a recent staffing change, per our alliance with the humans. An engineer, Faye Hoffman, has been assigned to you, correct?"
It occurs to the warlock that she has never asked the human her name.
She doesn't have a name, but she should still try to learn other people's. She'll apologize for being rude, next time she sees her.
"Correct."
"Has she made any attempts to interfere with your work in any way?" The doctor asks, clinical.
"No?"
"Is that a question?" She asks pointedly, looking for something in her response.
"No, I just wonder why you would ask that."
"There have been concerns raised that Miss Hoffman is unfit for duty. Do you agree with this?"
"No." The warlock lies, and immediately becomes very nervous because she has never felt the need to lie before.
"Elaborate." The doctor prompts, clicking her pen.
"She performs her duties adequately." The warlock says, which isn't really a lie if she thinks about it. "Menial tasks, mostly. Meal duty. Hostile engagements are a rarity, and I am insensate during them, but we have suffered no breaches."
The doctor nods, and writes, and reveals nothing.
"Okay, that's all for right now." She says, and she leaves the warlock alone in her room.
The warlock is loyal. This is her ship, she can say that more truly than even the captain. If the human were a problem-
Well, she isn't.
Not worth thinking about.
The warlock pulls a blanket over herself and her bloodstained shark and drifts to sleep.
