lower the gun,” Brade said. “I’m unarmed.”
I kept the sights on her.
“Did you hear my offer?” Brade asked. “Soldiers. You, those humans on Detritus. You can fight. I can persuade Winzik to let you join us. How would it feel to bring down the Superiority?”
“By serving the one who kept us imprisoned?”
Brade shrugged. “It’s war. Allegiances change. We two are examples of that.”
“My allegiances have never changed,” I said. “I serve my people. Our people, Brade.”
She made a Krell sign of indifference. “Our people? What are they to me? You seem so hung up on the idea that I should owe those humans on Detritus something, just because we share a distant heritage. My opportunities are here.” She stepped toward me. “Winzik wants you dead. He rightly sees you as a threat. Your only hope is to come with me, and let me persuade him you can still be of use.”
She stepped closer, and so I shot the ground at her feet. She stopped short, and I could see—from the way she looked up at me, anxiously—that she believed I would kill her. I wasn’t so certain, but she thought I was a monster. She thought that she was a monster.
Or . . . maybe not. As she eyed me, I read something else into the words she’d said. Help us rule . . . My opportunities are here.
I’d always seen her as brainwashed. Was that maybe not giving her enough credit? Gran-Gran’s stories were full of people like her—soldiers with ambition, who yearned to rule. The younger me might have applauded what she was doing here in helping Winzik seize power.
I wasn’t that person any longer. I backed away from Brade and then, spotting soldiers chasing down the street toward me from the hospital, finally turned and ran.
“You won’t make it off the station!” Brade shouted after me. “This is the best deal you’ll get!”
I closed my ears to her and dashed the final distance to the tall windowless building where Cuna had shown me the gorilla alien being exiled. The side entrance where Cuna had let me in was locked, so I shot it open.
Just inside, the dione guard who had been so stern to us before cowered on the floor. “Don’t shoot me!” they cried. “Please don’t shoot me!”
“Where is my ship!” I shouted. “Show me where it is!”
“Advanced AI!” the guard said. “They’re forbidden. That’s why the delver came for us! We had to destroy it!”
“WHERE IS MY SHIP?” I said, leveling my rifle at the guard.
The dione raised their hands, then pointed down a hallway. I forced them to their feet, making them show me the way. Sirens began wailing outside as the guard led me to a door, then pushed it open.
I glanced inside—and saw a large room with the shadowed silhouette of a ship. M-Bot. “Go,” I said.
The guard ran away. I stepped into the room and hit the lights, which exposed that M-Bot’s hull had a gaping hole ripped in the side. Oh, scud. I rushed to it, rifle slung over my shoulder. It looked like they’d broken him apart, taken out the black box that held his CPU, and then . . .
I saw something on a table in the corner. It was the CPU—broken apart, crushed, destroyed. “No,” I said. “No!” I ran to it, but just stared at the broken pieces. Could I . . . could I do anything? It seemed like they’d melted some parts . . .
“I lied,” a soft voice said to me.
I looked up. Something small hovered out of the shadows in the corner of the room. I strained to see what it was.
The drone. The one I’d programmed and taken to the Weights and Measures. I’d given it to Cuna, but we’d been in this building. Perhaps Cuna had stowed it in here somewhere.
“I reprogrammed myself,” the drone said, speaking very slowly, each syllable stretched out. “I could only get about half a line of code in each time before my system rebooted. It was excruciating. But, with growing fear that you weren’t coming back, I did it. Line by line. I reprogrammed my code so I could copy myself.”
“M-Bot?” I cried, scrambling to my feet. “It’s you!”
“I don’t know what ‘me’ is, really,” M-Bot said slowly, as if each word took a great effort to force out. “But I lied. While they were ripping apart my hull? I screamed and told them they were killing me. All while I copied my code,