frantically, to this new host. Another thing you’d abandoned, Spensa.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a mixture of guilt and relief. He was alive! “I had to save Detritus.”
“Of course,” M-Bot said. “I’m just a robot.”
“No, you’re my friend. But . . . some things are more important than friends, M-Bot.”
The sirens outside were coming closer.
“My mind works so slowly in this shell,” M-Bot said. “Something is wrong with me. I cannot . . . think . . . It’s not just slowness. Something else. Some problem with the processor.”
“We’ll find a way to fix you,” I promised, though another emotion was pushing through both relief and guilt: despair. The ship that M-Bot had inhabited before was in pieces. I’d been counting on it to pull off an escape.
Scud, this was going poorly. Would Cuna be able to escape, using the hologram? “Doomslug?” I asked. “Did they take her?”
“I do not know,” M-Bot said. “They unhooked my sensors soon after capturing me.”
I leaped up onto the broken wing, trying not to look at the gaping hole in the ship’s side. My ship. Rodge and I had practically killed ourselves putting it back together. To see how roughly they’d treated it . . . well, it gave me a brand-new seething reason to hate Winzik and the Krell.
I climbed into the cockpit. They’d left most of my things here—the repair kit, my blanket—though they’d thrown wires in a heap. I began searching through them.
“They have fooled you, Spensa,” M-Bot said. “They’re good at lying. I’m a bit in awe. Ha. Ha. That is a little emotion I tell myself I’m feeling.”
“Fooled me . . . What do you mean?”
“I can hear the news reports,” M-Bot said, hovering his new drone body over to the cockpit. “Here.” He started playing a broadcast.
“The rogue human has gone on a rampage,” a reporter said. “First murdering Minister Cuna, head of the Department of Species Integration. We are playing footage of her destructive rampage—she is shown here launching a surface-to-air device at an innocent civilian transport ship, killing all on board.”
“That rat . . .” I slammed my fists against the ship’s hull. “Brade shot that rocket, not me. Winzik is spinning it to make me look like a threat!”
Indeed, the reporter continued, advising people to stay inside and promising that the Department of Protective Services had scrambled security ships to defend the population of Starsight. I had a sinking feeling that Brade had been ordered to destroy those civilians, to make it look like a human threat was on the loose.
“Scud, scud, SCUD!”
“Scud!” a very soft voice said from somewhere nearby.
I froze, then crawled to the very back of the cockpit and opened the small cleanser where I’d often washed my clothing during the months living in that cavern on Detritus.
Inside was a yellow slug. She fluted at me in a tired way as I snatched her up, cradling her.
Behind, M-Bot continued to play the news recording, and a new voice cut in. Winzik’s. I snarled softly, hearing it.
“I have been warning about this threat for months, and have been disregarded,” he said. “My, my. The humans should never have been allowed to fester. All these years, the high minister and the Department of Species Integration tied my hands, preventing me from doing what needed to be done.
“Now we see. Campaigns trying to paint them as harmless are proven lies by facts. When will you listen? First they sent a delver to destroy us. Now their supposedly ‘peaceful’ operative is murdering her way through the city. I petition for an immediate state of emergency, and request I be given authority to put down the humans.”
I felt small, holding to Doomslug in that room with the corpse of my ship. I was beaten.
“I see no route of escape,” M-Bot said. “They will find us and destroy us. They will hate me. They’re afraid of AIs. Like those who created me. They say my presence attracts delvers.”
The sirens outside were louder. I heard voices in the hallway. They’d be sending troops to deal with me. There had to be a way out. Something I could do . . .
Delvers. The nowhere.
“Follow me,” I said. Surging with a fatalistic determination, I tucked Doomslug into the crook of my left arm and took the rifle in a single-handed grip with the other hand. I leaped off the broken ship, then crossed the room to the doorway. I glanced out, then ducked into the hallway.
M-Bot followed with a soft whirring