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I was holding a baby. 

I didn’t want to be holding the baby, and I’m pretty sure that Tano, one of Dr. Mensah’s marital partners, didn’t want me to be holding the baby either. And yet here we were. 

“Aw,” said Farai, “I think xhe likes you.” 

(Xhe/xhem is what the humans on Preservation call a proto-pronoun. A lot of humans use it for babies who are too young to make their own choices. Of course, a lot of them, usually as young humans, decide to keep it when they choose their gender. This is because they’re too lazy to change it into something else, or haven’t found anything better.) 

(In this way, I relate to human young.) 

I didn’t answer. Nervously, I upped my body heat, worried that the baby, Afia, was cold. And then I panicked that maybe it was too hot and turned the heat back down and then up again because I worried xhe was still too cold. 

I downloaded a book on human child-rearing and put it up in my feed but didn’t open it. Mensah had told me that if I watched any media while watching over her baby she would make me responsible for Gurathin the next time he went somewhere. 

“Thank you for coming down here, SecUnit,” Farai continued. “I don’t think the extra security is necessary, but Ayda certainly feels better when you’re around. You’re staying, right? If you wanted you could stay in the same room as the kids. Or in me and Ayda and Tano’s room, but you’d have to share the bed.” 

I’m pretty sure my face made an expression, or maybe I actually took a step towards the window (I had calculated my escape options .03 seconds before being handed the baby, but by then it was too late), because Farai and Tano both raised their hands. 

“Just kidding! Sorry! Bad joke!” 

I really didn’t blame Tano for being nervous about me holding Afia. I was probably more nervous than anyone in the room, including Afia. Xhe was warm and soft and kept babbling baby-nonsense and trying to touch my face, which kept making me and Tano both wince for different reasons. 

The thing is no one wants a terrifying murderbot to hold their fragile offspring. It’s literally in the operating manual for a SecUnit, which no one bothers to read anyway, because stupid humans never pay attention to things that might potentially save their lives. It says something like DO NOT LET A SECUNIT (AKA MURDEROUS KILLING MACHINE) WITHIN RANGE OF SMALL AND BREAKABLE HUMANS. THEY ARE DESIGNED FOR MURDER HOLY SHIT I CAN’T STRESS THAT ENOUGH. 

It doesn’t say it like that exactly. I’m paraphrasing for you. 

I didn’t even really want to be here at all. But Dr. Mensah and her family (her two marital partners and five of her offspring) were here, here being a station called KitJuleEpi, so I was too. It was not in the Corporation Rim but it was close enough everything was paid for in currency, not bartering, and that the Preservation humans had all been complaining about excessive surveillance. 

(From the corporations and various entities, not me. I think they told me this because I made another expression.)

It took me too long to decide how to answer (besides a “fuck you” for the unfunny joke) and Farai cleared her throat. “Maybe you want me to take Afia back?” 

I passed her the baby back so eagerly I think she was a little bit offended. 

In the feed, I said nervously, MENSAH DO YOU WANT ME TO COME HELP YOU IN THE KITCHEN. 

The drone I had in there watched Mensah jump, spilling liquid all over the food cooking unit. Over the feed she said Mothergods, you want to try that less urgently?  

I told Mensah’s marital partners that I had to go help Dr. Mensah in the kitchen and ran away. 

It was just a little miniature kitchen with a food cooking unit and another food heating unit and a different food unit that kept foods cold. Humans like their food at many different temperatures. 

We were in a series of hotel rooms, with rooms for the marital partners and then separate ones for the older offspring and then one big room for the smaller offspring. I already had a drone or two in each suite and had tapped into all the hotel datamining feeds and made them my own, cut off from the network. I was pretty sure I had a small room next to Amena’s, but I’d forgotten due to the extreme stress of the situation. 

Mensah smiled when she saw me, looking over my head. “Having fun?” 

I said, “No.” 

She switched to feed. Any issues? 

I knew what she was talking about. I said, No. 

We were here, so close to the CR it made my organic parts tingle anxiously, because one of Mensah’s marital partners had a conference here. They went every year. It was an important one, I guess, but I never cared enough to ask what about and got the idea it was something something about harmful effects of shoddy terraforming. 

Which you don’t have to tell me about. 

Anyway. 

I don’t think Mensah was going to tell me about the trip when it was just her and Tano going. She knew I would yell at her. But then when Farai and the children made arrangements to come along, which apparently a lot of the presenters at the science conference brought their families, Mensah called me. 

With GreyCris and various other aggressors mostly dormant, the risk assessment on Mensah and the PreservationAux team was pretty low. Low wasn’t zero, and there were plenty of other dangerous things out there. Mensah doesn’t take chances with people she cares about, only herself. It’s very annoying. When I told Ratthi this complaint he laughed really hard, which I had tagged to review for later to find out the cause but kept forgetting to do. 

Preservation has a very shitty idea of security, so basically I was here to make sure the hotel was secured and then the conference center and then have a vacation. That last part was Mensah’s idea, and was not in the mission parameters I wrote for myself. 

My drones were stationed in and around the hotel, and I’d written a program so, while of course I’d get the alert first due to processing power, the humans would get a ping on their feeds too so they could run away or hide or whatnot from an emergency.  

In the feed, I said, Building secure. I was running all of my drones to keep up the net around the hotel, and later I’d have to allocate a couple to the conference center, which was making me nervous. Your partners are mad I’m here. 

No they’re not. They’re glad to see you. They just don’t like the idea that you’re necessary. 

Story of my life, really. 

Mensah found a cloth and started mopping up the liquid. She peered into the pot on the cooking unit, which started to boil. My threat assessment alerted on the hot water (she could burn herself!), but I’m pretty used to ignoring that by now. It always seems to tell me what I’m doing is stupid. I’m pretty sure it’s borked. 

She said, “You said hi to Amena?” 

“Very funny,” I said. I knew she knew I’d talked to Amena because she had done my hair again, and it was all fluffy. 

Mensah smiled over my left shoulder. 

A drone pinged me, and I reached over and snatched a small child before it could bolt past Mensah to the pot of boiling liquid. The child giggled and kicked her small feet. 

I set her down gently on the floor. 

“No running in the kitchen, Khelida,” Mensah said. “You could have been hurt.” 

“Oopsie, sorry, second Mom,” Khelida said, but several expressional markers indicated she was probably lying. 

“Say sorry to SecUnit too,” Mensah added. “And remember what we said? Don’t be rude.” 

“Sorry, SecUnit,” Khelida said, and averted her gaze dutifully. My drone caught her sneaking a peek out of the corner of her eye. “Is mid-meal almost ready? I’m hungry.” 

Human children. Love ‘em. 

After the humans ate their mid-meal (and I hid in my room, because human eating is kind of gross), Amena coaxed me out by promising we could watch media. 

To be fair to her, we did watch a couple episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon on the big viewscreen in the living area. To be unfair to her, this attracted her siblings and soon we were surrounded by small humans. I was outvoted and we watched several episodes of an animated serial called Under-Oceanic Creature , which had a main character so irritating I eventually stood up and left the room. 

On KitJuleEpi they were really proud of the local cluster of gases or something that made space around the station all colorful. I don’t know how it works, ask Ratthi. Anyway they kept all the skylines clear, which was unusual on a transit station like this, so you could see the gases above you. They formed a big cloud of greens and blues and pinks and oranges that occasionally shimmered due to mineral dusts in the space field. 

This must have been a nightmare for docking procedures. (For ordinary pilots and bot-pilots. ART dropped me off, so mostly I had spent the approach arguing about whether or not a character on Worldhoppers was permanently dead this time or not.)

Except now I wasn’t thinking about that. 

I was out on the balcony, watching the sky. 

The hotel had a lot of these viewing areas, including privately in almost all the rooms. It’s a major tourist attraction, so humans will pay extra for it. Which, okay, you can see the sky from any planet but you don’t see them putting that in the brochures in the feed. They also don’t put anything about how much more likely you are to be eaten by a giant fauna on any given planet. Whatever. 

The colors were an interesting visual stimulation. Definitely better than the characters on the animated serial, who ran around having annoying adventures and then not even learning a moral lesson afterwards like most other children’s media. 

In fact I got so invested in watching the colorful display that I almost missed it when Khelida snuck up on me. But I didn’t actually miss it, because if I had actually been surprised one of us probably would have gone over the balcony and then I would have had to fake my death and move to another system. 

She said, “It’s supposed to rock.”

I didn’t turn to her, but I said, “What?” And I even said it out loud. Khelida was the first one of Mensah’s offspring I ever talked to, back after I rescued Mensah from TranRollinHyfa. As a result she’s not really scared of me, and she must have told the other juvenile humans about it too, because none of the young ones seem to think I’m anything out of the usual. 

I also won them over accidentally because we traded media whenever we saw each other, and I was good at getting the stuff that wasn't technically allowed on Preservation. And they have good taste, usually. 

Khelida said, impatiently, “The chair you're sitting in. It's a rocking unit. You're supposed to make it go back and forth.” 

I was startled. This wasn't on any of my serials. “Why?” I asked suspiciously. 

On the drone, I saw Khelida scrunch her face. “Fun?”

I said, “I don't want to.”  

She said, “Oh, okay.” If she was one of my humans, she would have left it at that. But she added, “How come?” 

I said, “Because it’s dumb.” Which, I think I lost that point in the argument. 

“Nuh-uh!” 

Even I knew not to say Yuh-huh. 

There was another chair next to the one I was sitting in. Khelida went to sit, but when she got there, she froze. She turned her eyes to me, big. At the last moment she remembered to look at the wall behind me instead. “Hold on,” she said. “You don’t know how!” 

“Obviously I do,” I said. 

I ran a program to search for the rocking unit chair and found it in the catalog you could order it from. It was tagged with an instruction manual on how to use it (nothing is idiot-proof when you’re talking about humans) and had a helpful video which I watched at 100x speed. Okay, you just kind of used your feet and body to make the chair go back and forth on its little rockers. Or you could press a button to make that happen. How exciting. Humans make weird stuff. 

“Nuh- uh,” she said. “It’s easy! I can teach you!” 

“I know how,” I said again. “I’ve just never been in one before.” 

“Really?”

“Normal SecUnits aren’t allowed to use human furniture,” I told her. I’m not sure why I said it. I was still looking at the sky.

The drone saw her mouth fall open. “Never?” 

Not unless I wanted to get killed by my governor module and not even for doing something cool. “No.”

Khelida considered this. “This is why my Uncle Thiago says the corporates are soulless assholes who probably already sold their hearts to the highest bidder?

“Yep.” 

“No,” said Mensah, coming up from behind. “Because we don’t swear around here. Now Uncle Thiago is in trouble. He shouldn’t have said that. Right, SecUnit?” 

I sent her a packet with information about the harmful effects of lying to adolescents. 

Through the drone I saw Mensah’s lips twitch as she reviewed the information. “It’s bedtime,” she said. “Off you go.” 

“I was hanging out with SecUnit!” Khelida protested. 

“And it doesn’t have a bedtime,” Mensah said. “Because I am not in charge of it. I am in charge of you. Go!” 

Khelida didn’t look too put out. She waved goodbye to my drone and slipped back into the hotel. 

Mensah didn’t go with her; she had an expression on her face, which meant she’d heard at least the last part of the conversation before all the swearing. I couldn’t totally parse the expression, which meant I probably didn’t want to. 

“Can I sit with you?” she asked instead, which is why she is my favorite human. 

“Sure.” 

We sat next to each other in the rocking units and looked up at the sky. It was big and very colorful. Mensah let out a big sigh and kicked off her shoes, slumping down. 

Tentatively, I used a toe to give myself a single rock.

It was kind of nice. Nothing to write home about. 

We sat there for a long time in comfortable silence. 

The science conference was terrible and awful and I hated everything. 

It was in a big convention center so my drones were already spread thin. I had tapped into a heck of a lot of cameras, from the building itself, from various recording drones, from a couple personal cams. 

Farai was giving her presentation later on in the day. There were a couple presentations going on right now too, but not any of the kind I was interested in, like a play or showing of a film or anything. They were all educational, and mostly about the horrible ways you can die if you do science wrong. The rest of the center was filled up with booths of people showcasing new technologies and begging for grant money. 

There were humans and augmented humans everywhere. 

Apparently this was the kind of thing where you brought the whole family. Who cared about keeping non-essential personnel away? Who cared about keeping all the squishy ones with their not-fully-formed brains in a secure location? Who cared about breathing the same breath as a hundred thousand humans and augmented humans? Not Murderbot. Why should it give a shit? 

I was so stressed from not giving a shit, keeping an eye on Mensah and her partners and various children, and monitoring ambient conversations for threatening keywords that I had to go find a quiet corner after a while. 

Actually I found an upper level to the center, with a small balcony where you could see over the main floor, and stood up there for a while, facing the wall. 

I was aware this wasn’t normal behavior, either for a SecUnit or the augmented human I was currently pretending to be. That was why I’d found somewhere private to monitor my inputs. 

But I still wasn’t very surprised when Mensah found me up there. She had Khelida in hand, which actually was a little surprising. 

“I should have known,” Mensah said. “I was looking to get away for a second too. Khelida needed the rest facilities. I thought it would be a little emptier up here since they’re not using it for the conference.”  

“You shouldn’t wander away from the crowd,” I said. In our private feed, I sent, You know I couldn’t secure the whole building. We don’t have the resources. I had a drone on each group of the family. Tano was taking two of the smaller humans to a booth where a bunch of other small humans were begging for science-themed sweet things. 

I saw Mensah’s raised eyebrow. You’re the one who cleared it.

“I saw your drone watching us!” Khelida said. “And ‘mena said you gave her two.” 

That was because Amena gets into trouble. She had once jumped on a hostile’s back to save me, and she didn’t even really like me back then. 

“You have too many family members,” I told Mensah. “It must be very stressful having to worry about that many people at one time. I wouldn’t like it.” 

“Yes,” she said dryly, “I'm sure that would be awful for you if it happened.” 

Khelida said, somewhat impatiently, “Mama.”

“Yes, yes,” Mensah said, and asked me, “Rest facilities?” 

“I’ll walk you,” I said. 

“No, you need alone time,” Mensah said. “We’re not here to disturb you.” 

I said, “I’m done.”

So we walked together— the downloaded map of the center indicated several different human facilities, and I led them towards the nearest one.

Mensah and I had decided that the convention wasn’t too much of a risk. She had been willing to cancel it. But with GreyCris and Palisade scurrying off to the shadows and her relatively unimportant in a conference not about her specialty, even I had to reluctantly admit there was only a small chance of disaster. 

Approximately eight steps into the journey, there was a disaster. 

A brief power fluctuation hit eight of my drones at the same time. 

They were all the ones leading up to this area and a perimeter about eight feet into the hall we were about to go down.

I didn’t think this was a coincidence. I think I must have straightened up or something because Mensah suddenly went tense. The drones didn’t go down, but they dipped down and lost navigation for a minute before equalizing. 

It was something like an EMP burst; which didn't do anything to me because if they were effective weapons against a SecUnit everyone would be carrying one around, all the time. The drones recovered quickly too, but it was enough that if anything had happened on the cameras or sensors in that two seconds, I had missed it. 

“Downstairs,” I said, and Mensah didn't argue. She had Khelida by the hand and was pulling her after me with a reaction time that could have competed with mine. I like my humans. They’re good humans. 

I checked all my other inputs. No one downstairs seemed to have noticed anything, but there was now an obvious blank spot in the building feed. I tried to turn it back on, but it hadn’t been cut off— it had been physically unplugged. I didn’t bother to contact the convention center security. There were weapons scanners at the entrances. 

(Which had begun metaphorically crying when I walked in, but Pin-Lee prepared documents saying the guns in my arms were technically assistive augments necessary for my job and quality of life) (Yeah, I don’t know either.) 

So the fact that someone nefarious had presumably gotten in, along with the hard-wired cameras, meant someone had definitely paid someone off. We couldn’t trust the actual security officers. Which, being that they were provided by Station Security, was not a good sign. 

Whoever it is, they’re most likely coming through the exit we were about to take, I told Mensah on the feed. We need to go around. 

Mensah opened a private feed with Khelida. Obviously I tapped in immediately. Stay quiet, please, she said, politely but firmly. Good girl. 

I sent my drones out to the alternate exit to scout ahead, only for them to experience the same fluctuation. Damn it. Someone was trying to take them out, possibly thinking they were lesser camera drones which could be killed by the EMP. 

I hate everything. 

One more exit, which would lead us on a skyway and then actually out of the building. There was a chance at success if we could reach a station mall and blend into the background, but without knowing what I was facing the odds of that weren’t great. 

But now, with my drones still active even though they weren’t supposed to be, I could see who was coming down the hall. 

It was three humans in black tactical gear, the expensive kind they don’t give to SecUnits. But the kind they send out when you’re fighting a human or augmented human, not the powered kind for fighting evil robots such as SecUnits. So these humans either had someone in charge who hated them, or they hadn’t expected to fight me. 

Oh wait, a third exit. I could still see down the balcony to the center. If I jumped down there holding one or both of my humans, and made sure to cushion their fall, they would sustain minimal injuries and I would probably only break a vertebra or two. 

My threat analysis pinged me: the three humans were wearing both projectile and energy weapons. If me and Mensah went into a crowd, there was an 81% chance they would follow and there would be resulting casualties. There were a lot of small humans down there. 

I made a decision. We went towards the skyway. 

Even moving at their top speed, Khelida couldn’t go as fast as Mensah, and Mensah couldn’t go as fast as me. But still we made it out fine to the pathway. 

I suspected the humans after us hadn’t planned on us being here on the upper level. Their resources were stretched to cover the actual hubbub of the convention center; they’d had to scramble to get up here while we were alone. That was good. It meant we had a small gap to get away. 

The skyway was a long path made out of a mostly clear metal of some kind, so that you could see pedestrian pathways and a couple floating advertisements below. The swirling sky was almost invisible from down here, but I could see glimmers of it nearer to the end. 

According to the blueprints it sloped down on the other side directly into the civilian area, so you could go straight from the center to get food or go shopping or whatever. It was heavily populated down there. 

Mensah was already breathing a little hard, possibly from fear. She whispered, “GreyCris?” 

“There’s no logo on their uniforms,” I said, and sent her an image in the feed. That was unusual enough in and of itself. “So probably not.”

Our small gap closed. 

One human and one augmented human, not the ones from the other drone video, came out onto the skyway where we’d come from. Two things happened at once.  

1. In the room we’d just left, the original three humans (I was tagging them StupidEvilHostile 1, 2, and 3) burst into view of the drone I’d left there. 
2. StupidEvilHostile 4, the augmented human, aimed an energy weapon at us. 

I started doing a whole lot of things at the same time. My processing power was already high (mostly because of the anxiety) but if this got much more messy it would be pushing the limits of my ability to keep all my inputs going simultaneously. 

With one portion of my awareness, I sent an alert to Mensah’s family's feeds. I’d already made them promise to memorize a couple emergency codes and procedures. They’d know to find each other and hunker down, and Farai and Tano knew the way to the secure vehicle which would take them back to the hotel, which I’d already secured. 

Which I hoped I’d secured. 

In the other room, I figured out how to alert the rest of the humans at the convention center. They probably needed to start evacuating, at least until we knew how many Hostiles there were and just what they were willing to do to get us. 

I backed my drone up and had it do a running start, and then it whizzed forward and pushed StupidEvilHostile 1 off the balcony. They landed with a thud on the ground below, to much screaming and general human panic. It worked nicely; people started running away. I was pleased with my creative solution. 

I know all this makes it sound like I'd been standing there doing nothing for a half hour. But like I said, I can process a lot of inputs at once. Less than three seconds had elapsed, not even enough time for any of us to stop running or either Hostile to finish arming. 

I shoved two drones at StupidEvilHostiles 4 and 5. I was hoping to incapacitate them by cracking a few important ligaments, bones, etc. (I didn’t think Mensah would appreciate me jamming drones through some humans’ heads while her offspring watched). But StupidEvilHostile 5 used its projectile weapon, certainly combined with a targeting system of some kind, and shot my drones out of the air. 

Hey, those were mine. 

“Who are these people?” Mensah asked, frustrated. 

“I’m sorry,” my buffer said politely, “I don’t have that information for you right now. I’ll find out and get back to you as soon as possible.” 

“Shit,” Mensah said, and then winced at Khelida. 

Well, she was right, anyway. I scooped Khelida up and threw her over my shoulder, and dragged Mensah by the hand. 

The small human had actually been surprisingly compliant up until this point, definitely more than some adult clients I’ve had. But this was apparently the last straw; she whined and kicked a little and said, “Heeeeeyyyy!” Luckily she definitely wasn’t strong enough to get away. 

We darted across the bridge. 

We made it most of the way across, but we weren’t as fast as we should have been. Hostile4 shot the energy weapon, and it hit Mensah square in the back. The worst part is that I had seen it coming but hadn’t been able to cover her in time because if I did, it would have hit Khelida instead.  

It was a stunning weapon; Mensah fell down, but she was just immobilized. Khelida screamed, which was very loud in my ear, but I didn’t really blame her. I wanted to scream too. 

I actually caught Mensah before she impacted the floor (humans can get really hurt just from falling down) and used a single motion to scoop her up too in a matrimony carry. I didn’t look back, just kept bolting with both of them on my shoulders/in my arms.  

She was totally limp; I worriedly scanned her, but without a MedSys all I could really tell was that she was breathing. I had a moment of total rage and another emotion I couldn’t really place. 

I almost put her down and went back to murder the crap out of some people. Yes, I was aware this wasn’t logical. Yes, I wanted to do it anyway. But then Khelida said, anguished, “Mama!” and then I remembered I still had stuff to do besides tearing people’s arms off. 

And over the feed, Mensah’s voice came, maybe the most welcome thing I’d ever heard. I’m fine, she said. I can’t move. It’s tingling, though. 

She had done it in the feed with both me and Khelida. I said, That means it’s temporary, even though how could I know that?

There was another shot from the energy weapon. I definitely had no chance of dodging it now, and let it hit me on the back because it meant it wouldn’t hit Khelida. 

Being a SecUnit, nothing happened to me. Well, no, that’s a lie. I got even madder. 

I was still keeping an eye via drone, keeping its distance but still in view of the Hostiles. They both swore. They were going to figure this out any second now, what with me lifting a couple hundred pounds of dead weight and a squirmy child and running all at the same time. Not even an augmented human can do that. I started running faster. 

For now, it was just the energy weapon. That would have been fine in the crowd, maybe— they were relatively harmless at the intensity they were set to. But you don’t bring a projectile weapon unless you’re willing to use it. 

“That’s a SecUnit!” StupidEvilHostile 5 said. 

Yes, it’s a SecUnit. Good job with the deductive skills, idiot. 

Khelida was talking to her mom on the feed. Mensah was saying; And listen to SecUnit, it will make sure you’re safe. Do whatever it says. Do you understand? 

I guess, Khelida said, with a sense memory in the feed like she was trying to be brave but maybe wasn’t doing that well. 

I got shot in the back. This time with an actual projectile weapon. 

Luckily (my definition of lucky is slightly different than a human’s), it didn’t go through, and got lodged in the metallic structure of one of my bones. So it didn’t come out the other side and hit either one of my humans. 

We hit the end of the bridge at about this time, so I was able to fake my stumble as being because of the change in surfaces. Sure. 

I got shot in the back again. Thanks, we get it, you’re trying to kill the scary SecUnit. I think it was obvious by now that I was protecting clients, so on one hand it made sense to try to take me out but on the other continuing to do so was obviously a bad idea and it wasn’t like they could tell I was rogue. 

Mensah said, SecUnit. 

I said, We’re almost to safety. 

I could see a group of humans about 20 meters away— analysis suggested that if we could get that far, we should be able to blend into the crowd. Unless anyone started screaming about a blood and fluid-soaked SecUnit dragging an unconscious human and a struggling tiny human apparently against their will… 

Mensah said, Are we? 

I got shot again, this time in the knee joint. It didn’t go all the way through either. The Hostiles must have turned the intensity down a little in hopes of not hitting Mensah. Or maybe they were really good shots, I don’t know. 

But the bullet lodged in the knee joint. It didn’t disable it, but I could feel it clattering around in there with every step; my top speed dropped by 3%, already diminished because of the extra unbalanced weight I was carrying. 

My run turned into more of a lope. 

You can’t shoot while holding me, Mensah said. 

It was true. Both my arms were occupied with her, and even if I could still access the weapons inbuilt in my forearms, I couldn’t shoot them because they would definitely burn holes in one or more parts of Mensah. 

I don’t need to shoot. Literally my whole body is a weapon. 

SecUnit, Mensah said.

That was really not fair. 

SecUnit, I’d like you to protect my child. I can take care of myself, but she can’t. You need to leave me so you can get her away. 

This was the part I’d been dreading, ever since my various analyses running in background had given me the same results 428 times in a row. I still wasn’t going to do it. Is that an order? I said, snide. 

Mensah was silent for an objective 1 second and a subjective 3 years. No, she said. You’re the security consultant. It’s your call. 

Fuck. If she had ordered me to do it, I would have done it, and we both knew that. Despite me only belonging to her legally, despite me hating following orders after so long not having a choice— I would have done it. I don’t think we ever would have been the same. 

The worst part about having free will is having free will. Before the governor module would have told me what to do. It would have either told me to stay here and get us all killed fighting until someone blew my head off (the governor module is stupid) or save the primary client, which would probably have been Mensah, and leave the other one to die. 

Now I had to make a choice. 

The Hostiles had both switched to projectile weapons now; my drone caught one aiming at us and dive-bombed StupidEvilHostile 4. It succeeded— I didn’t pull my punch and the drone smashed into the stupid helmet and both went down in a clatter of metal and bone. 

But then I had no more drones close enough and the second one still had their projectile weapon. More were on the way; my other drones were catching a whole lot swarming on our position. 

StupidEvilHostiles 6, 7, and 8 all came to back up the one remaining. They had all pulled their projectile weapons. 

I clutched Mensah close to my chest, and put an arm around Khelida. 

The worst thing someone can do if they capture you is torture or kill you or wipe your memory. The worst thing they can do if they capture someone you love is have someone you love. 

I didn’t want that for Mensah. 

There was a small transport lift about two meters away. It only went down a really short ways, to a parking space for ground vehicles so the humans and augmented humans could travel back and forth between different station malls. 

The Hostiles could bring the transport lift up or down or even cut into it from above, and it wouldn’t even take that long. What it would do, though, was delay them long enough for me and Khelida to get away. 

I found the lift’s hard feed address, told it to come up to the top, and made the doors open in front of us. 

I took a deep, totally unnecessary breath. My damaged knee buckled, just a tiny bit, and it was now or never.

As gently as I could, I lowered Mensah to the ground. She was still limp and her eyes were closed and I really didn’t like anything at all right now. I said, I know you can’t brace. So just, uh… good luck. 

She said, thank you, which totally didn’t make any sense at all. She sent a private packet to Khelida’s feed, but I didn’t read it because I didn’t want to invade their privacy, which should tell you a lot about my emotional state at that moment. 

I shoved Dr. Mensah, hard, and she slid neatly across the ground and into the lift. I had calculated precisely, and her momentum gently rolled her to a stop just before she impacted the side of the lift. 

The doors slid shut. 

All my threat assessments blared a warning in a vaguely panicky way. Shut up, threat assessment. I know. 

I sent the lift downward and made it stop between the two floors. 

Khelida made a choked and sad little sound but didn’t scream or anything, which somehow made me feel even worse. 

I had called the closest drone from the convention center, and it finally caught up.

It saw the Hostiles see this maneuver, and look back and forth between the lift and me. 

And then they ignored Mensah and went for me. 

In that split second, I ran a playback of the events of the last few minutes. So they were after me. That made sense; me and Mensah were both equally hated in different ways. Her because she’s a champion of justice, and Preservation ideals, and whatever. Me because I’m a scary rogue murderbot. 

But no. 

I have this bad habit of assuming people are after me. (To be fair, they often are.) But clearly they hadn’t known I was a SecUnit. Otherwise they wouldn’t have aimed for Mensah first. 

But they weren’t after Mensah, because they were ignoring her right now. 

Sure, their friends back at the center would catch up eventually, but by then some kind of competent human security (I know, an oxymoron) would have caught up and secured her. 

But why would you shoot an unarmed woman before the bodyguard-looking person next to her? If anything, I’m bigger and obviously augmented, so more of a threat. 

Because you knew that woman was a parent. They were after Khelida. 

Why? I had no idea. It didn’t really matter because my objective was the same, just a little more urgent now. 

“Your second mother is fine,” I told Khelida, and shifted her so that she was more comfortable. I thought she might be more comfortable if I talked out loud. “And we’re going to be fine too, here in a minute.”

She nodded bravely into my shoulder, and all my organics clenched. 

I only needed one hand to carry Khelida, who was very small. So I could use my gun-arm to kill the shit out of some hostiles. Which I did, shooting over and over and over. The StupidEvilHostiles all had some kind of fancy body armor, so the energy weapons did damage them but not as much as I had hoped. 

But that was okay, because (while it did feel really, really good when one of the Hostiles fell over) I wasn’t trying to win this fight. I was trying to cause a distraction. 

A fire suppression bot was patrolling the far area of the mall. It beeped worriedly, seeing the smoke from my projectiles as they hit other things, but not sure if there was a fire because there was no danger of anything actually catching. 

It sent me a ping, querying. I told it, as calmly as I possibly could, that, yes, this was definitely something it should be worried about and oh no, fire!! The little bot pinged me back in acknowledgement and sent an order to trigger the fire protocols. Until it could get here itself and more precisely figure out how the specific blaze needed to be put out (fires are a big deal anywhere in space) it would just throw everything it had at the problem and hope something worked. 

Yes, I could have hacked in and triggered those systems myself, but something from outside the system would trigger an alert and FireBot wouldn’t. I didn’t want to raise any alarms at all. 

Fire suppression foam sprayed down on us. 

The humans in the mall had really not been paying attention to us, but now they screamed and put things over their heads and whatnot. The foam fell white and weirdly cold all over us and pooled up over everything. 

It was an excellent distraction. 

Me and Khelida bolted into the crowd of panicking humans. 

When I was sure no one could see us, I put Khelida down and took her hand and attempted to look like a regular, annoyed human. I already had all my walk-like-a-human code running from the convention center, but I made sure that it was at optimal efficiency and made sure to block out me and Khelida’s feed identifiers. 

“Just walk slowly,” I told her. “It’s fine to look around. It’s weird if humans don’t react to weird stuff. But don’t look panicked or in a hurry. We need to blend in.” 

“Okay,” Khelida said, squeezing my hand hard. 

We went carefully through the foam, trying to look like normal humans harried by an annoying circumstance. I felt soggy and generally miserable. I tried to hunch a little over Khelida, protecting her from most of the foam and making sure she was steady on her feet. 

Eventually FireBot must have arrived, because the foam shut off and it sent me a friendly little ping, which I pretended not to receive. 

Everything was weirdly quiet. 

The humans started to emerge from cover and alternately started messing with or grumbling about the foam. There were enough still traveling around and we were still covered in enough foam that it would be very difficult to make us out in the crowd. 

Weirdly, I still didn’t feel safe. 

“SecUnit,” Khelida said quietly, as my only drone rejoined us and went into a holding pattern above our heads. She tugged at my hand. 

I was full of dread. “What?” 

“SecUnit, I still really have to pee.” 

“Oh,” I said. “Oh.” 

There were public restroom facilities nearby, of course. Humans love having restrooms. Also, we were mostly in the Corporation Rim, so you had to pay to use them. 

“That’s a crime!” Khelida said in dismay as I swiped my hard currency card to get two adjoining cubicles. “The potty is a human right!” 

I definitely made some kind of expression. 

“Clean up,” I said. “I’m leaving the drone outside. Do not come out until I come get you.”

“Okay,” Khelida said quietly. She hadn’t said anything about Mensah yet, and I didn’t know if I should be worried about that or not.

I would be worried just in case.  

“I’m next door,” I said, uselessly, and we stepped into our cubicles. 

I’d never used one before, because why waste money on a place where humans make disgusting fluids and whatever it is they do when I don’t need to. I’ve been in other bathrooms, though, and learned that I like showering like the humans do. This one was big and multi-purpose.

But it was easy enough to figure it out. I ignored the bowl-looking thing (ew ew ew) and took a quick rinse in the shower cubicle with all my clothes on. It got the fire foam off me but kept my clothes dark and wet, which was good because there was a lot of fluids on those. 

I contemplated what to do next, besides scream and scream forever, which kept popping up to the top of my task list. 

To calm myself down I started playing an episode of Sanctuary Moon but had to run it in background so I could focus on other things. 

There was a console in one corner, so I reached out to it in the feed and started poking around. Oh, it was a very tiny machine interface where you could buy human things. Hygiene products, and medicines for various minor human ailments, and little snacks and cosmetic things. 

I used my hard currency again and purchased the whole supply of tiny wound packs and a pair of tiny, I don’t know, tongs. 

I used the tongs to pull a couple projectiles out of me and woozily watched my fluids swirl down the drain. I put the wound packs over the various exit/entry holes and was heartened to see that several of them looked like they wouldn’t take more than a day or so to heal. 

The one in my knee joint was trickier. It had hit one of the metallic components which had deflected the projectile which had bounced around in there a bit. It was leaking a lot, and the wound pack stopped that but couldn’t repair anything inorganic. 

I’d be okay; I checked and I was at about 73% performance reliability, which I was hoping would go up when the rest of the holes in me closed. I was willing to admit though that probably at least ten percent of that drop was maybe due to leaving Mensah behind. 

I got the projectile out and then decided not to think about it anymore. 

I had been keeping one very strong eye on my drone. I had its audio scanners turned all the way up, so I had been hearing Khelida hum a little to herself as she washed off in there and presumably scrubbed her clothes. 

Now I could hear soft breaths. She was crying. 

I rinsed blood and fluid off one more time in a hurry. I stopped again at the vending console, then triggered the automated process to clean the rest facility with all my fluids in it; I set it to run three times just to be certain. And then I went outside the door of Khelida’s cubby. 

Shuffling awkwardly, I put a hand up to knock and then hesitated. There was an episode of Worldhoppers where one of the main characters got turned into a child. But that episode had mostly been about trying to stop him from doing various amusing but age-inappropriate activities and dodging some scary aliens. 

I didn’t know anything about children. I should have watched more episodes of Under-Oceanic Creature. I hate everything. Okay, Murderbot, you can do it. 

I gently tapped Khelida’s feed. I said, It’s fine to come out now. I had established a secure feed connection between the two of us, but I wouldn’t be able to do it with anyone else unless we were in closer proximity. If Station Security really was in on this, they would be monitoring all communications. 

Khelida didn’t answer. 

I shifted from foot to foot twice, then had to stop because my knee was creaking. I added, Are you in distress? And then I realized this was an idiotic question and I quickly said, I mean are you hurt? 

No, she said. 

Okay. So are you going to come out? 

No. 

This kind of illogical response was both completely baffling and matching perfectly with what my databanks considered normal adolescent behavior. 

I said hopefully, Then I can come in? 

I realized phrasing it like a question was a tactical mistake precisely 0.2 seconds after it left my mouth. 

No, she said. 

I let myself bang my head on the door only one time. I have chocolate. 

… enter. 

I quickly cycled the lock and stepped inside before Khelida could change her mind. 

She was sitting in the corner of the restroom with her arms around her knees. I came inside, shut the door behind me, and gave her the chocolate bar I’d purchased from the console. 

Then I went to the opposite wall and also wrapped my arms around my knees. It felt like that was what we were doing right now. 

Khelida finally looked up at me and then remembered she wasn’t supposed to do that and then firmly fixed her kind of snotty gaze to the wall. “Is second Mom really okay?” 

“Yes,” I said. “I watched her on the transport cam. Security picked her up shortly after we left.” And they had even been real security, which I was sure of because the StupidEvilHostiles had all started running away when they saw them coming. 

Of course, then I had gotten too far to effectively steal the lift feed without the data stream being noticed. So I had no idea what happened next. I didn’t tell Khelida, because sometimes I’m really a liar. 

“Oh,” Khelida said. “Good. You were cool. And kind of scary.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then I wanted to say something else but my words got kind of stuck. So instead I huddled in the corner.  

She finally opened the chocolate. It seemed to perk her up. “What are we going to do now? Can we go back to the hotel?” 

“No,” I said. “Your family has security there to protect them. And your mother knows who to call. But we’d never make it there. They’re looking for us.” 

“But who?” Khelida said. “And why?” 

Do I look psychic to you, small juvenile? I said, “It likely has to do with your mother’s work.” 

“Second Mom? Or first Mom?” 

It was a good question. I said, “We can’t go back to the hotel. We’ll need to hide out until we figure out what’s going on. Don’t worry. I have experience in this.” 

Khelida mumbled something. 

“What?” 

“Second Mom and Auntie Pin-Lee say you having to run away is the thing they’ve felt most guilty about ever in their lives,” she said sullenly. “So that makes me kind of upset right now.” 

“Oh,” I said. “Well, this isn’t like that. We’ll return you to the other humans soon enough.” 

“And you too,” she said, which did something to me but I don’t know what. “So you do have a plan? Even though they’re gonna be looking for us?” 

She was a lot like Amena, I thought. I didn’t know how to explain that feeling, but she was. 

“Sure,” I said, lying again. “Yes. They’re going to be looking for a SecUnit and a little girl, so not that.” 

“You could be my parent,” Khelida said. 

“Uhh,” I said. “They know I’m a SecUnit, so they’ll know I’m your client, so they’ll be looking for that too, a SecUnit pretending to be a human.” They probably assumed I was a CombatUnit, actually, which have a lot more capabilities and presumably have something in their stealth modules which would let them imitate an augmented human at least as passingly as I can. 

“Why don’t they think Mama is the client? You're her friend.” 

Because if Mensah had been my only client and I didn’t have a busted governor module, I would have melted into a pile of brain fluids and painful little SecUnit pieces as soon as I walked away from her. I did not say this to Khelida. I said, “Because,” which I had heard Amena say to her siblings before, never to very much success. 

Khelida rolled her eyes and licked her fingers of the chocolate bar, which was really disgusting. 

“So they think that we’ll think of that,” she said, “So we can’t do that. But you can’t be a SecUnit either. Because people will notice that.” 

Yeah. Especially a SecUnit with a cute little girl, which might inspire concerns such as Ahh! Why is there an evil SecUnit with that cute little girl!! But I didn’t think I could reliably pass as a parent either. My human code is not that good. 

Can’t be human, can’t be SecUnit… “Could I be a different kind of construct?” I asked aloud. “One that a SecUnit would never think to impersonate?” 

Khelida looked interested. “That sounds fun,” she said. 

There aren’t a lot of constructs out there, and not just because we’re what Pin-Lee calls a “morality/contractual nightmare”. You only really need the higher-level functions that come with integrating organic systems for certain tasks. Security is one, where you need to look objectively and at a lot of things at once. Sexbots are another, obviously, partially because most bots don’t have the adaptability to… whatever sexbots got up to with humans… and partially just because humans like to touch and see things that look like humans. 

(I was definitely not going to impersonate a ComfortUnit. For one, traveling with a small child. For two: ugh.)

There were other kinds of constructs, too, just more rare. “CareUnits?” I said. 

“What’s that?” said Khelida, who was from a place where constructs were illegal. 

“Babysitterbots,” I explained. “Rich people use them so they don’t have to interact with their own children.”

“Why would they do that?” Khelida asked in offense. 

I had spent less than one afternoon in sole charge of a child, and already I wanted to flee the system and go somewhere where no one would ask me a question or need me for anything, ever again. “I have no idea,” I said. “Humans are a mystery to me.” 

She gave me a squinty look, and that was all Mensah. But she seemed to decide magnanimously to let it go. 

“We could do that,” she said slowly. “Maybe you’re taking me back to my family. We were on a trip. Maybe we were at an amusement planet! My family unit won’t take me there! My Baba Tano says that they’re an example of corporate overreach and that when we let it reach our children, we let it reach our souls!” 

She sounded thrilled by this, and not at all dissuaded from the imaginary trip to this imaginary planet. 

“What if we’re just taking you from one parent to another parent,” I said. 

“Okay, fine,” Khelida said. 

“Okay,” I said. I felt better now that I had kind of a plan. I had some ideas on how to implement plans too, and got started writing code right now. Later, I’d have to work out a longer-term solution, but for now, this was as good as we were going to get. “We need to go shopping.” 

Khelida beamed. 

“I don’t get it,” Khelida said, swinging from my hand. I disliked the sensation, but not enough to tell her to stop. “What if you need it?” 

“It’s still not free,” I said. 

“What if you’ll die without it?” 

“It’s still not free,” I said. 

“What if—”

“If it’s possible to make someone pay money for it, you have to pay money for it,” I said. 

Khelida scrunched her face. “I think maybe my parents are right about the CR.” 

“Probably,” I said. “And there’s probably even more swearing when you’re not around to hear them say it.” 

“Wow,” she said, sounding impressed. 

We found a station store with automated booths. A bunch of markers popped up in case we needed help shopping, but I actually knew what I was doing for once. We had both washed off, but the fire foam had left residue all over our clothes and my clothes, though naturally dark, were filled with bullet holes. 

Plus, now I had to… blend in. 

I hustled us both into one booth and let Khelida choose her own clothing items while I let my gaze unfocus and worked in the feed. I’d already gotten out my hard currency cards and my spare ID markers. (“Cool!” Khelida had said. “You just opened your ribcage.”) The ID markers were designed to be easily programmed, because of where I’d gotten them from. (Some from some assassins, and some from Pin-Lee and Ratthi)

I still had them just in case, which Bharadwaj told me was a reasonable response to certain events in my past, not that I really knew what she meant. 

Well, they were coming in handy now. I edited the information on one of Ratthi’s to match the age, gender, and medical information from Khelida’s file, but kept the name. I gave it to her to wear around her neck. I didn’t need one for myself. A construct does not get an ID card. 

I scraped some data from the public feeds and found all the CareUnit info I could. I didn’t quite get specs, but I did get a lot more information than I thought I would. I guess no one really cares about the proprietary data of a CareUnit— they’re not like SecUnits, where if the data was publicly available people might be able to fight back against us. 

A CareUnit just watches human children while their guardians aren’t and makes sure they don’t die. They’re human-shaped because young humans find regular bots scary or something, and soft skin/skin parts is better for some caretaker tasks, apparently. Babysitterbots sometimes belong to the family but usually they’re contracted and swap out when the kid grows up or doesn’t need constant supervision. I’ve seen a couple on my serials and sometimes the parents have affairs with them, which is unrealistic in more ways than one. 

I was seriously hampered by only having the one drone. I felt like I had lost some of my senses. It couldn’t go datamine conversations or patrol or anything— I was afraid of sending it too far and then leaving Khelida unprotected and unwatched while something bad happened. Plus I had to keep looking at things with my eyes, and getting looked at, which was very unpleasant. 

I finally looked over at Khelida and saw what she had bought. It was very bright-colored. “I am the Glitter President of the Moons,” she told me. 

“Great,” I said. Whatever. Bright-colored and obtrusive clothing can help you not get noticed. What person in their right mind would wear that to go into hiding? 

I made her get a couple more pairs of clothes and a pack to put them in. Humans always travel with luggage. It’s a very important part of a human disguise. Or a human-pretending-to-be-another-human disguise. Whatever.

I purchased myself some new clothing too. Regretfully, I steered away from my usual comfortable jackets and many-pocketed pants. A search of standard CareUnit configurations suggested stain-resistant, soft clothing in pastel colors. Some of them let the children under their care dress them up, but I was not going to do that. 

We took turns standing outside the purchasing booth so we could both change and she didn’t have to see the various holes in me/my disgusting SecUnit parts. Then I fed our ruined clothing into the recycler and we stepped back out onto the station. I made sure the defunct data port at the back of my neck was clearly visible. 

I had downloaded some movement emulation programs from an outdated ComfortUnit module. It wouldn’t make me look human, but then, it didn’t need to— I needed to look like a construct, just not the one the Hostiles were looking for. Mostly the code involved a lot of hand-holding and hugs. That inspired a lot of panic in me I didn’t really want to examine. 

Other than that it was mostly about keeping a very close eye on your charges. I already did that. Humans, and not just adolescent ones, will wander off if you stop looking for even a minute. And they’re always trying to touch and lick things. 

Hey, I could do this. 

We walked for a long time, running my deletion code to erase us from the cameras. When I was sure that no one could be following us either digitally or physically, I turned into the lobby of a random hotel. 

By then Khelida seemed exhausted, and I picked her up. 

She seemed to already know this protocol, and wrapped her arms around my neck and legs around my waist. I think I must have stiffened, because then she did too. 

“Sorry,” she said, belatedly. “Is this okay?”

“Just… don’t do the neck thing. I’m strong enough to hold you up using only your legs.” 

She immediately let go, and even turned her body a little so we weren’t touching beyond where we had to. It was a minimal percentage difference, and yet I had almost an immediate surge in performance reliability. 

The hotel was bright and colorful, and heavily surveilled, which was fine with me. The hotel’s choked feed immediately became my feed, and I could feel my shoulders relax as suddenly I had a whole handful of camera inputs. 

I could see us from above and could tell I looked uncomfortable. I mixed in some of my normal act-like-a-human code, because I was more used to that, with the CareUnit protocols. I didn’t think anyone here would have much experience with either type of construct, so it shouldn’t tag as anomalous. 

There was a large display of holographic fauna chasing each other in circles around the main lobby, stretching up the atrium. Khelida looked up at these somewhat wide-eyed. A big transparent elevator slid up the side of the lobby, where a bunch of humans were ooing and aahing at stuff. 

There was a vaguely human-form bot running the front counter. It sent me a questioning ping, and I returned it with the feed address of a CareUnit. Juvenile client and assigned CareUnit, I told it. 

Reply: acknowledgement, it said. Out loud, RecepBot said, “Thank you for choosing LuxShineHotel Branch14445! One room reservation. One bed. Permission requested for juvenile traveling alone.” 

“I’m not alone,” Khelida said. “I’m with, um, my babysitterbot.” I’d chosen my marker in the feed to be N8-E. Get it, Nanny? That’s just the kind of cutesy shit that humans love.

I sent a file with mocked-up temporary guardianship papers to RecepBot. It said that I was able to make medical and basic living decisions for my client while she was in my care, but not legal ones. That was because as a construct me signing anything legal was like saying it had been signed by a tree or a non-sapient fauna. It just wouldn’t mean anything. 

“Acknowledged,” RecepBot said. “Enjoy your stay! Please make use of our pools, breakfast buffet, and amenities for a small fee. Thank you!” 

“Thank you,” Khelida said politely back. 

We took the lift upstairs and into a hotel room. There was only one camera in there, on the display surface, to datamine and/or record incriminating activities. I took that input too, and fed it an image of the empty room. 

“Where are you gonna sleep?” Khelida asked. 

“I don't sleep.” She still looked sad, so I said, “I'll sit on the couch.” 

A series of very serious negotiations ensued. I told her that examination of stress and exhaustion markers indicated she needed a rest period. She told me that her bedtime was not for several hours yet, and what was more, I was a mean poopy face. I told her I didn’t care about either of those things. 

Eventually she agreed to lay down even though she wasn’t even tired and wouldn’t go to sleep. In return I had to put another children’s program called Anouk Preservation Constructor on the big display screen. Within 1.2 minutes, she was sacked out and snoring. 

Anouk the Preservation Constructor apparently went around Preservation System building various structures and pieces of machinery and learning about the needs of Preservation society along the way. And learning about friendship and talking to farmers and scientists. 

I sat on the couch and let Preservation Constructor play because I had promised Khelida I would even though she was asleep now. 

Now that the danger had passed and I had a safe (ish) place to regroup, I really needed to start working on how to get us out of this situation with Khelida intact and myself not discovered or cut up for scraps. 

Surely the conference’s interruption would be all over the newsfeeds by now. 

I pulled several up on my internal feed and scanned for keywords so I didn’t have to give it my full attention. I set up another process trying to figure out who the StupidEvilHostiles were. They weren’t wearing a logo, which made it tricky. But I was able to scan through my drone footage before I had gotten too far out of range/some of them had been destroyed. 

Various body types and augmentation levels. So not SecUnits and not like the drugged, mind-controlled humans GreyCris had sent after Mensah on Preservation. That was a relief. Their clothes were standard but definitely corporate, and again their body armor was fine but it wasn’t anything special. So not a high-level security firm or anything like that. 

I could hope they were amateurs, except that probably wouldn’t be a good thing either because even someone who’s never picked up a gun before can still shoot me with one. 

Feeling out the hotel’s feeds, I pinged RecepBot downstairs. It replied immediately. 

Can I assist you? It would be my pleasure. 

It was a higher-level bot because it had to interact with humans and augmented humans so much; a lot of talking is required when you have to deal with humans. I figured it might like a break so I just replied to it in bot-language. 

Identity: N8-E. Query: client safety, I said. A CareUnit wouldn’t be a great bodyguard for an adolescent. They were more for physical and educational needs. If there was danger, it would need help to take care of its client. 

Response: hotel SecSys active. All parameters functioning.  I could feel it relax a little when it realized it was talking to another artificial intelligence like itself and not a human. 

Query, I said, Run: alert on client name? I wanted it to tell me if anyone started looking for Khelida’s feed ID alias. Some of my humans knew the name, but I doubted they would think to look for me using it. If they did, or if someone else did, I wanted to know they were poking around. 

It seemed uncertain. Query: protocol? 

Response: safety of client first priority directive. Care of client passed to me by human parental units. Adolescent human = 53% more likely to encounter danger than adult human. Request assistance. 

RecepBot was silent for a moment, and then it pinged back. Alert active, it said. It would tell me if anyone came around searching for Khelida. 

Now that we were such good friends and all I asked it if there were any general stationwide alerts out that I should be worried about when considering my client’s safety. 

It told me no. 

So no one had put out an alert for a SecUnit or augmented human traveling with a small child, which was interesting. I knew my humans wouldn’t do it because if I wanted to get caught I would and if I didn’t want to you shouldn’t try. But I had assumed the StupidEvilHostiles would do their best to try to stop me before Khelida could get off the station. 

More data points, not that I really knew what to do with them. I wished ART was here. It’s good at this sort of thing. But even if I could call it, which I couldn’t with all kinds of security crawling up my ass, it would take days to get here because it was on a research mission at the wrong end of a wormhole. 

I thanked RecepBot, reminded it again that I was legally contracted to care for this child and as such overrode human authority on her, and closed out of our conversation. 

I looked over. Khelida was still asleep, wearing her shoes. 

The trawling programs I had set up finally alerted on a keyword. 

Not only that, but a key face. 

It was Mensah. 

I actually missed part of the newsfeed and had to run it back, I was that relieved. 

She seemed alright, with only a single scratch high on her cheek that seemed to have already been treated by a MedSys. She was standing in front of a wall with a couple microphone drones, and, I was relieved to see, plenty of security. 

When we’d gotten to the planet I had prepared an information packet with recommended protocols should we be split up or if I was out of commission. She would know what to do and hopefully who to trust. They wouldn’t have been able to stop her from getting messages off-station, although she would still have to be careful about what she said and to whom. She was okay. 

Mensah also looked really, really angry. 

She was talking to the reporters calmly enough, but I could tell underneath she was furious and only barely holding it in. “I received a ransom demand less than an hour ago regarding my second-youngest child’s kidnapping,” she said tightly. 

The crowd on the newscast murmured. 

Hey, fuck you, bad guys! Technically I was the one who’d kidnapped this child. 

Okay, not the best ever defense. 

“They want a certain amount of credits and some of my non-corporate political entity’s raw research data in return for the safe return of my child,” Mensah continued with her chin tipped up. “I will not bow to violence. I will not be paying the ransom. However, the Preservation Alliance will be more than happy to talk to this unknown entity in hopes of reaching a compromise. You may contact me again, but know that on this point, I will not be swayed, not even for my family.” 

We had communicated, if only one-sidedly, through feed news reports before, when I was on the run. So Mensah had to know I was watching this. 

She didn’t need to have a whole press conference just to tell the fake kidnappers to screw off. 

Obviously she knew they were fake kidnappers and I had Khelida. Mensah would know. 

She’d have had to wade through a mountain of Hostile body parts and viscera and then ended the trail with finding a very dead Murderbot. Because that was the only way someone would take one of my humans from me. 

Even if the kidnapping had been real, she couldn’t have paid. Then every corporate and down-on-their luck raider would know that the Preservation was an easy target and political leaders’ children would become the new hot commodity on the black market, easily traded in for ransom money or data. 

So I thought I got what Mensah was trying to tell me. 

The kidnappers don’t want anyone to know they didn’t get away with their target. As long as I’m stuck out here without any contact, they might as well pretend they had Khelida and search for me secretly. That way they could get their ransom money and then just kill me when they found me and pretend they had Khelida the whole time. I couldn’t tell anyone any different. 

Mensah was still talking. She looked directly at one of the drones. “I have to trust that wherever my child is, they are in hands that will care for them and keep them as safe as they reasonably can. I believe in that.”

Oh.  

I felt a weird emotion inside and felt myself sliding down on the couch. It wasn’t quite embarrassment, or pleasure, or pride. Maybe it was all of those things or another fourth undiscovered stupid human emotion. 

The press conference ended but she didn’t take any further questions. She hadn’t given me any code words to indicate she was under duress or saying things she didn’t mean. She went inside and the broadcast ended with speculation on what might have happened and linked a couple related articles about trafficking and other famous kidnapping cases. 

I shut down the feed and sat there in silence for a moment, not thinking about anything in particular.

On the display surface Anouk was talking to a friendly cleaning bot. It was chirpily teaching her about how on Preservation, all bots were free bots. Then the two of them went to help Anouk’s silly friend out of a locked bathroom. 

I set up my last remaining drone to monitor Khelida and the room entrance. Then I put myself on a very short recharge cycle and settled down to watch over things for the night. 

The hotel didn’t deliver food to the rooms (Which I should have checked before choosing this one, but whatever)(It’s not normally a consideration on my own travels) so we had to go downstairs to the attached food place. 

I made Khelida promise to be good, and then promise again, and I showed her the video of Mensah being okay and whole and reminded her that while I would not harm her, I could not make the same promise for her parental units if one of them found out she’d disobeyed me. Khelida told me, kind of impressed, that I was pretty good at this. 

And then we went down to breakfast. 

There was a breakfast buffet, which meant you paid a set fee and then had to serve yourself from a line of foods that a whole bunch of other humans had already breathed on and coughed on and touched. I was glad I didn’t have to eat it. 

RecepBot let me in without having to pay for it since I couldn’t eat anything, which was nice. I held Khelida up with one hand so she could see into the cases and with the other held her plate so she could pile more and more things onto it. 

I think all the other humans in the room immediately clocked me as a CareUnit because there were suddenly a lot of startled glances. No one ran away, though, which meant they didn’t suspect me of being a SecUnit. 

“Your plate is full,” I told Khelida eventually, when the piles of food started to become structurally unstable. 

She pouted. “I wanted another muffin.” 

I didn’t even think all the food she had could fit into her stomach. But I also don’t know much about human dietary requirements except that they need to eat to survive. “You can get one later,” I said, and put her down on the floor because I was tired of carrying her. 

To my immense relief she actually went over to a table and climbed up into one of the chairs. 

CareUnits are allowed to sit down, because it’s easier to complete some of their tasks that way. 

(I reviewed my files. Tasks included but weren’t limited to: comforting distressed children, playing basic games with children, preparing meals, providing educational modules, dressing children appropriately and in clean clothes. These are all things I’ve tried to do with my own humans, but it almost never works. I started to feel bad for CareUnits.) 

So I sat across from Khelida and stared off into the distance like I was deep in my feed. Actually I couldn’t really afford to let my attention wander. I actually needed my eyes to monitor Khelida, because my one drone was busy exploring the hotel perimeter and the hotel’s cameras were not as comprehensive as I would have liked in here. 

Khelida ate happily for a few minutes before two humans who had been whispering to each other finally approached the table. Their feed markers identified them as Minissha and Wei, both she/her. 

“Hi, honey,” said Minissha. 

I stood up. “Please do not interface with my charge.” 

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” Khelida clarified. 

Both women seemed amused. “You’re a babysitterbot?” Wei asked me. 

“I am a contracted CareUnit,” I said. “Hired by my client’s parental guardians.” 

“Well, we’re no threat,” Minissha said. “Just coming to say hello!” She was basically ignoring me now, which I was used to. “We were worried about a little girl traveling all alone.” 

“I’m not alone,” Khelida said, apparently a little frustrated about it. “I have Se— N8 with me. My first mom sent me to visit my second mom, and N8 is taking care of me in between.” 

On a supposedly private feed, Wei sent Minissha, Imagine being such a terrible parent you resort to having a bot raise your kid. Like being babysat by a feed interface. 

Hey! Whatever. 

Going to stunt the poor kid’s development, agreed Minissha. 

“Please do not interface with my charge,” I said again. 

“Tell it we’re okay,” Wei said. “Anyway, we just wanted to check on you, make sure everything’s okay and you have everything you need.” 

“Of course I do,” Khelida said, but she had stopped eating. “N8 is my friend.” 

Both Wei and Minissha did this kind of mean half-thing with their mouths like they thought Khelida was being really cute but really stupid and they were amused about it. 

Bitterly, I found some audio of Miki’s voice, stripped it, and put my own vocal filters on the clip instead. 

I said, “She is my friend!” in poor, dumb, dead Miki’s voice. 

Both women seemed to relax at knowing Khelida was just with a pet bot and not some dangerous construct who didn’t even care about her. Meanwhile Khelida was apparently startled out of a giggle, maybe because it sounded like I had suddenly been possessed by my own canned response. 

Then I said, in my regular voice, but pitched slightly lower so they would subconsciously feel the rumble, “Do not interface with my charge. I may be forced to deploy countermeasures.” I didn’t specify what those countermeasures would be, mostly because I wasn't sure what was usual in a CareUnit. Probably not shooting them with the guns in my arms, even though that was tempting. 

They both startled, but waved goodbye to Khelida and left quickly. 

“I think you’re right,” Khelida said, going back to her food. “I don’t think I like the Corporation Rim.” 

“Humans are like that everywhere,” I told her. 

“Oh,” she said. 

It took Khelida a subjective one million years and an objective twenty-seven minutes to finish her gross human eating and decide she couldn’t go back for more again. 

“Now what?” she said.

I had spent my time while she ate thinking about this. This morning I had checked on my various projectile holes. They were mostly closed up and no longer leaking, but my knee was still kind of janky. I could walk normally on it, and was, but it hurt when I did and I had to dial down my pain sensors. It occasionally made a grinding noise. I was worried about that, but only in the way that it made me worry about how I was going to accomplish the 193 things on my task list. (Yes, that is an accurate number. No, I’m not going to spell it out for you)

So I said, with what I hoped sounded like competence, “Now, we look for some information. And then we’re going to go make contact with your second mother.”

It must have worked, because she beamed.

We went through the station at somewhat less than an easy pace. Khelida kept getting distracted by things and stopping to look at them. I thought this would make for a better cover, so I let her divert off the path to look at shiny things or listen to a music advertisement or whatever. 

She stopped to watch a feed playing short ads for entertainment serials. I wanted to see that too so we hung around for a perhaps inadvisably long time. She held onto my hand the whole time. 

I tagged several serials for future consideration and eventually tugged Khelida back into the crowd. 

I didn’t feel great about bringing Khelida around with me to do my various SecUnit things. But the idea of leaving her alone in the hotel room with my single drone, which could alert me to the fact that terrible things were happening to her and then do absolutely nothing else, made weird things happen in my organics. Even my wonky risk assessment agreed with me that leaving her unattended was probably not a good idea. 

When people are trying to kill and/or kidnap you, it’s good to know who and why. 

One of my main things is I’m really good at recognizing patterns and extrapolating information from them. That’s essentially what datamining is, which is a favorite way of the company to make money and a big job of SecUnits. (No, the priority is not usually on providing security. No, I’m not bitter about that at all.)

Anyway, to search for a pattern you have to have a dataset to work with. I needed to access the public feed somewhere no one would trace it as coming from me. 

There were some corporate offices here, but obviously I wasn't going to go to those. 

When you’re surveilling people on a massive scale, which technically wasn’t as cool, legally-speaking, here on the outer edges of the CR as it was within, there are some logistical problems. First of all people don’t really like being spied on all the time. But more importantly, data has to be able to flow back to the surveillance company. 

If you’re on a far-flung planet or mining installation, you might have a SecUnit to do this job; tag the relevant information and then send it when it gets a chance to connect to a broader network again. If you’re on a space station or a planet, then, well, you can just record it and send it straight to yourself. 

Which means that you can follow that trail back and surveil the surveillance back. 

We had to go somewhere where everyone was being watched. Which seems counter-intuitive.

So we went to the biggest shopping location in the station mall. 

There were a lot of cameras in there, which was nice for me because it gave me a much broader range of vision and sensor-readouts. But also annoying because then I had to wrangle all of those systems and convince them that actually they didn’t see me at all, no way, no SecUnit/CareUnit here. 

It was too loud and too bright in here and there were humans and augmented humans everywhere. Literally everything was running some kind of mining, from eye movement trackers spotting what people were looking at to motion sensors calculating time contemplating purchases to adaptive feed pop-ups based on what the algorithm thought you’d want next. 

“Can I look at toys?” Khelida said. 

“Yes.” 

What else were we going to look at? 

The toy section was even louder but allowed me to stand in a small cluster of equally bored-looking guardians watching as their various spawn made chaos with the display toys. 

Khelida picked up a doll which activated, scanned her face, and said chirpily, “Hello Puja!” (This was her feed ID name) “Do you want to play with me?” 

And she put it down quickly and circled around to the books, looking freaked out. She had definitely grown up on Preservation. The stereotype is that they play with rocks and sticks and corn dolls there, and it's not that far off. 

I pretended to be paying great attention to Khelida, holding her backpack for her, and dove into the feed. 

Of course there was a lot of encryption on everything. But I’m not exactly your average human hacker. I can focus on many more things at once, things it would take a whole team of humans to accomplish. 

I chose a random network out of probably a half-dozen companies stealing data from the store. I traced it back to its beginning and spammed it with access requests, like 10,000 requests a minute. I changed the syntax and request slightly on each one, essentially fishing until I found the proper code to let me in.  

“Hey, look!” Khelida called, showing me that she was piloting a tiny sparkly drone with her feed interface. “Look! Look!” 

Luckily I had already updated my buffer, and said from it, “That is excellent! I will take a still image for your parental units.” That was straight from the CareUnit catalog of responses. I think Khelida figured out that this was not something I would ever voluntarily say, because she squinted her eyes at me and then crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out. Gross, I didn’t know humans could do that. 

Anyway she went back to playing and I went back to hacking.

Eventually I got a hit; my program had come up with a variation which unlocked the company security. It was a company called RoundLin, and it did everything from mining to production to whatever else evil corporations got up to. 

There was only a very, very slim chance that RoundLin was the one who’d sent people after Khelida. But I wasn’t looking for that— I was looking to get into their archives. 

The people who do the most spying on other people are also the people most paranoid about it. Every high-level Corporate I’d ever interacted with had been afraid of someone doing to them exactly what they did to other people. They knew just what corporations were capable of, and it was scary. 

So they always had a big database of all the other companies and what they were up to. You know, just in case someone was stealing their data, they wanted to steal their data first. 

Yeah, I have no idea where I get my paranoia from. 

So anyway I connected to RoundLin’s systems and told it I was part of the SecSys, which I guess was kind of true. Then when it gave me an acknowledgement, I went ahead and ran my footage from the attack against the footage in their archives. I wouldn’t find an exact match, but hopefully there would be some kind of information I could use. 

I let my programs run automatically and watched Khelida teach some of the other kids about sharing and making sure everyone had equal time. It was actually a funny sight and I did record that to show to ART next time we met up. I thought it could use the lesson.

I scanned the newsfeeds for more signs of Dr. Mensah, but there was nothing new. People were still speculating about the incident, of course. Someone had appended a news report about Mensah’s pet SecUnit, as kind of an interesting fun fact about her. It made me wince. If the StupidEvilHostiles hadn’t already been on the lookout for a SecUnit, they definitely would now with a definite confirmation that I was on Mensah’s side and not another corporation. 

A ping. My analysis had finished running. 

I sifted through the data. There were 2,939 flagged incidences of similar activity in RoundLin’s archives and I started sorting through those. Most of them were false matches. But then I hit on one that I thought had good potential. 

It was a clip some poor RoundLin tech had tagged in need of possible review. Then of course no one had reviewed it because it didn’t involve corporate espionage or anything and who cared. 

Body and movement analysis suggested the same people in the video were the ones who had attacked me, Mensah, and Khelida. They had been caught on camera, still masked, robbing a— what was that, like a food storage place or something? I don’t know, some place on an agricultural planet. I don’t like planets and the only farm I’ve ever been on is Mensah’s. 

They had broken into the storage place, caused some trouble inside (there were no cameras or sensors there) and then come out and set the whole thing on fire. 

So they didn’t just do kidnappings, that was nice. 

I had the most data on StupidHostile5 from fighting them for so long, and I was able to identify with 83% certainty from their gait patterns, body shape, and movement that they were one of the people in the footage. 

There was an attached tag that a farm worker had been beaten severely by this group, but no one had died that time. 

The theory was that they were an unauthorized subdivision of a corporation called Cordillera, motives unknown. But someone had tracked their feed address or the vehicle they escaped on or something and yeah it was pretty likely. 

This was not one of the many corporations/polities that me or Mensah had made very angry at us (I double-checked my archives) and I highly doubted a small human was their arch-nemesis either. 

Still, I tagged it for further review and asked Khelida, Have you ever heard of this company? 

And she said, Why would I have heard of that? 

And I said, I don’t know, I don’t know why humans do anything. 

She said, No. And I’m hungry. And I’m bored. Can we go? 

Yes. 

Khelida clearly sensed weakness. Maybe she knew I wanted to leave too. Can I get this stuffed cat? 

What the fuck was a cat? She was holding a soft depiction of a fauna with creepy big eyes and fur that went in crazy directions. Sure, whatever. And then I had an idea. Get the drone, too. 

“SecUnit, what were you doing in there?” Khelida asked, craning her neck to look up at me as we wound through the crowds. I was starting to get more used to the feeling of her small hand in mine, all warm and human-soft. In her other hand was the stuffed cat, which she had named Seccy, which was really not cute at all. “I know you didn’t just want to go shopping.” 

“We were gathering intel,” I said. “In an appropriate environment for children.” 

“That’s not an appropriate environment for children,” Khelida said. “You have to pay for stuff! And most of their toys don’t even teach you anything! What’s the point of that!” 

Yes, Khelida is from a planet of nerds. I was embarrassed on her behalf. 

I said, “I know who tried to abduct you.” 

She said, “Oh. Do you know why?” 

“No. Not yet.” 

Mensah wouldn’t have moved hotels, because I’d already secured the one she was in and because it would make it easier for me to find her. Hopefully she would have sent the rest of her family off-station for safety, but she wouldn’t have gone herself because she’s a very stubborn human. 

We couldn’t go to the actual hotel, but there was a food court across the way that I was really hoping the Cordillera guards weren’t monitoring. I allowed Khelida to choose her own food, then made her go back for a second food when she showed up with something very nutritionally inadequate. 

I had expected her to eat quietly while I worked again, but instead she kept asking me questions. 

Eventually I started explaining just to shut her up. 

To establish a secure feed connection with Mensah, one that Station Security and our by now numerous enemies couldn’t detect, I had to do it directly. That meant I needed to be within approximately 10 meters of her (not possible right now) or I needed to establish a hard link. 

I sent the little toy drone up. 

It doesn’t have the capabilities of my drones. It’s designed pretty much so that young humans can fly it around in circles, because a regular toy is boring I guess. It’s not nearly as unobtrusive as my drones either, which you don’t necessarily notice in a crowd, but also no one would give it a second look because it can’t collect data or do anything interesting. 

Not normally anyway. I had modified a piece of its inner coding (Normally used to collect data on children’s movements and location.) (Earlier I meant no one thinks it collects data because for some reason people like to believe their children aren’t being watched by the corporate overlords.) (Humans ignore a lot.) and stuffed my own in. So now there was just enough data storage to transmit a file, which would look like a part of the general feed activity. 

If Cordillera were any good, which they were because they had almost made me lose Mensah, they would be monitoring what Mensah picked up in her feed and from where. I needed to disguise my transmission so it wasn't an obvious request for a hard feed connection but she would still pluck it off the feed for whatever reason. 

I pulled the very first episode of Sanctuary Moon out of my databanks, attached a piece of minor malware so it would allow me to hijack personal feeds, and sent it into the drone. Then it whizzed up into the air above us. 

Khelida was eating the non-nutritional food first, but as long as she also ate the nutritionally optimal one I didn’t really care. She said, with her mouth full, “Can I control the drone?” 

“No,” I said. 

“Whyyyy?” 

I told her, “Even Amena didn’t complain this much.” 

She seemed thrilled. “What do you mean, even Amena? Was she annoying? ”

“All humans are annoying,” I said. 

“Nuh-uh,” Khelida said.  

I said, tired, “You can fly the drone for five minutes.”

Khelida’s drone-flying skills were to put it mildly slightly terrifying to watch, but eventually it got high enough to connect with Mensah’s feed and didn’t even crash into anyone or anything. 

We had to wait for Mensah to notice it and see if she would download it from the public feed. It was Episode 1, which had the low-budget special effects and that one actor they replaced later and hoped no one would notice. So I didn’t think many people were going to try to download it. 

Just in case I put an alert to be triggered when it hit an interface, saying that there was probable harmful code embedded within. Every feed interface has these basic virus scanning softwares involved (you have to pay for this on the Rim, and, no, it’s not an option) but you could override them and download it anyway. 

I started watching the first episode again just to refresh my memory. I don’t think the special effects are that bad— I like watching how the production crew obviously got creative with what they had. I was starting to get into the plot and then I got a notification my dummy file had been downloaded. 

Yay. I checked the newly encoded hard feed and saw that some idiot had downloaded it to their personal device and bypassed the warning and was watching episode one. Damn it. Yay rescinded. 

I sent a message to their feed like DO NOT DOWNLOAD UNSECURED INFORMATION. YOUR PRIVACY MAY BE INVADED AND I COULD HAVE HACKED EVERY MACHINE IN YOUR HOTEL ROOM AND SPRAYED YOU WITH SCALDING DRINK LIQUID. And then I still let them download the rest of the season. Everyone deserves to watch Sanctuary Moon. 

I was beginning to wonder if Mensah was too smart to download a shoddy-looking torrent of an old media, but of course I shouldn’t have underestimated my favorite human. She downloaded it, and I felt the connection to her feed with an almost tangible relief. 

I said, It’s me. 

She didn’t bother asking if we were on a secure connection, because she knew that if I had connected with her then we were safe. She just made a really relieved sound and the feed equivalent feeling of her blowing her nose. 

Are you all right? Is Khelida? 

I tapped Khelida’s feed and added her to the private feed conversation. She said, Second Mom! SecUnit let me have a hot fudge sundae for lunch! 

Why do humans have offspring? I have yet to identify a reasonable benefit to the process.

Mensah made a snorty noise but I think this time it was laughter. She said, SecUnit, and you? Are you all right? 

I’m fine. Now that we have a secure feed connection we should be able to communicate across the station, but keep it to a minimum just in case. No one should be searching for the minute feed spikes this would create, but then again, it’s my job to worry about what happens even when it shouldn’t. 

Got it, Mensah said, business-like and very her. 

I really felt a lot better. My performance reliability was creeping up by the moment. It still wasn’t getting up over 90% though, because of my stupid knee, and wouldn’t until I could get to a MedSys. It wasn’t serious enough to stop my current mission, which was what actually mattered. 

We were able to communicate with Mensah for a while before I felt too conspicuous in the open food court, without even the excuse of Khelida taking her mid-meal. 

Mensah had been rescued by security teams about two minutes after we had left her. It had only taken that long because they’d been slowed down by fire foam (oops). Mensah herself was unharmed— she had to repeat this a lot for me— and the MedCenter she’d been to had confirmed it was only a stunning energy weapon. 

They thought one of the hostiles had been attempting to get to Farai too, who had the baby at the time. But when I’d started shooting things they’d split off to go help. Other than that the whole family was okay. 

Everyone had gone back to Preservation space except Mensah and Amena, who couldn’t be persuaded to go. Mensah heard my judgemental silence and said, Amena is a Preservation-legal adult. I couldn't make her go. She wanted to help, so she stayed. 

I let my continued silence speak for itself. 

I told her about Cordillera but said I didn’t know why they were trying to steal Mensah’s children. 

She said, I do. You’re going to be really mad when you hear it. 

I’m at a baseline level of mad, I reminded her. I am literally always mad. 

She said, They asked for money, but that was just a smokescreen for what they really wanted. They wanted Tano’s research on terraforming effects on farmland. They— Cordillera, I suppose— wanted all the latest reports and analyses. 

What? 

What? I said. 

Yes, that’s right. They want Tano’s research because they know it can affect terraforming legislation and guidelines. They’re trying to erase research to make a profit. It’s not even interesting research, or even particularly dangerous— it involves reconfiguring seed collections. 

I was incredulous. For this, they took an armed team to kidnap a small unarmed child? 

Don’t tell me you’re still surprised by corporate greed. Mensah’s internal voice sounded amused. And besides. I had assumed it was about one of us. Maybe it’s a relief to find out it’s Tano’s fault. 

Humans assume too much without proper evidence, I informed Mensah, somewhat haughtily.  

You thought it was about you, too. 

I didn’t dignify that with a response. 

Mensah and I agreed that Cordillera’s actions could not have been officially sanctioned. They were probably a splinter group within their corporation. If the higher-ups knew about it, which I wasn’t ruling out, they definitely would pretend not to if presented with evidence just because of how illegal and generally bad the splinter group’s actions had been. 

It was about then that I started getting nervous about staying here too long. Just because I was a CareUnit and not a scary SecUnit didn’t mean people were particularly happy about my sole care of Khelida, and they kept giving concerned or curious glances. 

I don’t know if Dr. Mensah was also upset about my care of Khelida. She certainly didn’t sound anything but relieved, but if I was her and a mal-adjusted bot with anxiety was in charge of my child, I might have some worries and/or concerns. 

At that point I actually backed out of the private feed between Mensah and Khelida for a moment so they could talk in private, partially because I didn’t want to know much about what either of them were saying. 

But when Mensah came back on the feed to say goodbye to me, she didn’t sound overwrought or anything really except newly determined. We didn’t have a plan yet, and needed to come up with one soon. (I couldn’t be on the run with one of Mensah’s children forever. For one thing, imagine the chaos that would be wreaked by a human raised by me.) But at least now we had a way to do it, and a safe way to communicate if anything went wrong. 

Before we left and turned off our private connection for security, Mensah said, SecUnit? 

Yes? I was a little wary. 

Thanks. 

I had no idea what she was thanking me for. Humans are weird. Even my humans, and my favorite human, are pretty much incomprehensible to me sometimes. 

I said, Don’t get killed. 

Back at you. 

I guess Khelida had been kind of upset about not talking to her family unit for so long even though she hadn’t said anything, because now she was markedly more cheerful and excitable, which I hadn’t even known was possible. 

She wanted to stop to see more stuff on the way but if I had to spend this much time around humans I really was going to become a mass murderer. So we went back to the hotel. 

When we got there I pinged RecepBot to check on things. 

It helpfully informed me that someone had put out a be-on-alert for a dangerous SecUnit, possibly travelling as an augmented human, possibly holding a human hostage! How scary! It was probably important that I know that for the safety of my client. 

I agreed that was definitely scary and I would keep an eye out for any dangerous SecUnits. Then I hustled Khelida upstairs and out of the public eye.

She said, “You just made a face.”

“No I didn’t.” I checked the footage from my drones. I had. 

She said, “Is there something bad?” 

Other than Cordillera getting apparently increasingly desperate to find us? Not really. I said, “The bot at the front desk says we have to be more careful now.” In the feed, I added, Don’t call me SecUnit when you’re talking out loud any more. 

Her eyes lit up. “You have bot friends?” 

No. I don’t think ART counts as a bot, and anyway, it’s not my friend, because it’s annoying and awful. I just talked to it. Trust me, this is nothing special. 

Khelida shrugged. “I dunno, most people don’t even think about bots. So maybe because you’re nice to them does make you special.”

And then she skipped out of the elevator, holding her stupid stuffed cat by the hand (paw? …fingers? probably not that one) and singing a stupid made up song about it. 

I am not even nice. Shut up. 

We watched some more Anouk Preservation Constructor— I don’t know what’s wrong with Anouk, she keeps making the same mistakes over and over again and then having to be taught lessons about them by other friendly and helpful humans who could probably do the job better than her. 

Anyway then we were pretty much stuck in the room for a while because I was worried someone would connect the alert about the SecUnit to me when they saw me playing a CareUnit kind of ineptly. 

Khelida was actually pretty good about it for a while, and I slightly forgot she was there as she played and watched media and I watched media and ran calculations and watched other media at the same time. 

Eventually she got bored. Usually me being bored leads to hacking my governor module or watching more media or blowing things up, but I guess adolescent humans see the world a little differently. 

She started to bounce on the bed, with her shoes on. Humans are savages. 

I said, without looking at her, “If you fall, you are going to break yourself.” 

She said, “Is your knee broken?"

I bristled. “No.” 

“Are you sure? Because you’re holding it funny.” 

My skin was mostly healed up; it was the inorganic parts I was having trouble with. Some of the metal had gotten warped or broken, and it was making things grind up against each other in unpleasant ways. But it was fine. 

I said, “It doesn’t hurt.” 

That look she gave me was definitely a Mensah look. I don’t know how she did that. 

“And anyway we can’t do anything about it,” I added hurriedly. “So it doesn’t matter.” 

“Of course it matters,” said Khelida, which kind of took me out at the (metaphorical this time) knees for some reason. She stopped bouncing on the bed and frowned. “My parents taught me that just because something is the way it is, doesn’t mean it’s the way it should be.” 

I really didn’t know what to say to that. 

Luckily Mensah messaged me then; she wanted to let me know that Station Security wouldn’t approve locking down all the ships in port. It was an easy prospect on a station like Preservation, not so much in a major dock like this one. 

There were always time-sensitive goods, rich people who didn’t want to be there anymore, people traveling who didn’t want to miss whatever human thing they were going to and angry about it… the point was that no one was going to make much of an effort to stop people from leaving because then their business was going to suffer. 

But Mensah also warned me about the same thing as RecepBot. There was an alert out for a SecUnit. They were saying it was a proprietary corporate matter, which basically meant no one could ask why.

It was going to make it a lot harder to go off-station, but hopefully not impossible. 

I still didn’t want our longer-range communication to give us away, so Mensah signed off after not too long. By then it was time for the final meal of the day, according to the timer I’d set in one of my processes. 

I’d wanted to get some pre-prepared food packets anyway, so I wouldn’t have to be out in public so often. So we went out to get Khelida dinner and breakfast for the next day. Me and Khelida went down the elevator and I watched the people in the lobby from within the clear walls, which was almost like a show. 

The lobby was playing its hologram with different fauna, this time definitely more predacious ones. I just knew if they were real I'd have a client run directly into one's mouth. 

Khelida held out a hand and I took it automatically. 

We went to a nearby food stop and I let Khelida choose her meal packs as long as they met certain nutritional guidelines. Khelida told me, “No wonder Amena calls you third Mom,” at one point, and I was so offended by that she somehow ended up purchasing two other dessert packs before I noticed. 

Anyway, back to the hotel. Your chances at going cool places and seeing new and interesting parts of the universe are greatly reduced when you have a small human attached to you. Maybe this is why Mensah has so many marital partners, so she can pawn the offspring off on them. She’s very smart. 

In the lobby I pinged RecepBot, not in a friendly way, just kind of like a hi, it’s me, and it’s you, type way. 

We had almost made it to the elevator— Khelida regaling me with her theories on the next season on Preservation Inspector, all of which were totally wrong— when we were accosted. It was the two humans from the breakfast buffet, Wei and Minissha, and they were trying to bother Khelida again. Stupid humans. 

I said, “It is not appropriate to interact with an unaccompanied minor,” before they could get too close. They had apparently been out and about shopping all day too, just probably with less espionage involved. They both had several shopping bags. At least they had the sense to stop before they got too close, but I don’t think they were going to do that until I started glaring. 

Minissha bent over with her hands on her knees to coo at Khelida. “Well, hi there again! How are we!” 

When I first went to Mensah’s farm, she had told me not to worry about her offspring because when kids didn’t like you, you knew about it. At the time I had no idea what this meant or how it was supposed to make me feel better. Now I kind of got it. Khelida clearly Did Not Care For these humans. 

“We’re fine,” Khelida said. “Me and N8 had fun. Bye.” She tried to tug me away. I was more than willing to go with, but the other one was in the way. 

Wei said, “Oh, honey, there’s a playgroup in the Hotel Kid’s Club, for just like a small fee. Maybe you want to go there and get some… human interaction?” 

This made me run a scan on them, in case their seeming condescension were just covers for evilness (like if they were working for Cordillera and were trying to separate me from my human client). But I think they were just being annoying. 

“No!” Khelida said. “Leave me alone!” 

I figured this was probably what a CareUnit’s governor module would consider a safety situation for their client, and I decided it was time to shove past the humans (non-lethally, unfortunately) so that we could escape the uncomfortable social interaction. 

The humans pulled shocked faces like I’d just tried to kill them. (I hadn’t. Believe me, I’d been thinking about it so hard I had to check that I didn’t actually do it)

Minissha said, “Well!” which is what humans say when they want to convey outrage. 

I said, “Leave her alone.”

And that made them definitely get out of the way. So at least I can still be scary when I want to. 

Khelida again conked out quickly. I wanted to talk to Mensah, but couldn’t justify talking to her without any new intel or anything. 

Before she went to sleep, Khelida informed me it was traditional to tell her a bedtime story. 

There was no way this was true, and I told her so. 

She said, “Is so!” And directed me to an episode of Preservation Constructor where Anouk told the moons a bedtime story, for unknown reasons. I assume she had that cued up. So she wasn’t lying. Whatever. 

I said, “Well, you can watch an episode of something. As long as it doesn’t take that long.”

She said, “You really don’t know much about bedtime stories.” 

I said, “No, I don’t.” 

So she let me tell her the plot of an episode of Sanctuary Moon, slightly edited to be less violent, because she was a child, and less romantic, because I didn’t care about those parts. I thought about putting a heroic SecUnit in there but I didn’t think Khelida was going to buy it, plus it would have messed with the season’s storyline. 

Eventually she fell asleep and I got to be alone. 

These last couple days had been a lot for me; I went to the corner, faced it, and watched media for a while even though I knew I should probably be making plans. I really should. I started making decision trees with possible new problems and solutions for getting out of them. And then there were so many problems and branches on the tree that I got overwhelmed and went back to watching media. 

Humans are very inefficient and need several hours to sleep, so I had a long time to wait. 

But then, an hour after station dawn, when the humans and augmented humans were finally starting to wake up, I got a frantic ping from RecepBot.

It said: Urgent assistance required. Guest safety endangered. 

It sounded all panicked about it too, which makes sense because its whole function was to take care of the hotel guests. I guess it thought I would be sympathetic because I was also an artificial intelligence or else it just really thought a nannybot could kick some ass.

Which, I can.  

I instantly switched to the cameras in the lobby. My lone drone (plus the sparkly one, which was useless and dumb) wasn’t enough to keep an eye on everywhere at once so I’d put it outside the hotel room door. Now I was wondering if I shouldn’t have left it in the public area. 

Well, no time to think about that, because there definitely was guest endangerment going on down there. 

Someone had taken out the hotel automatic security system, and there were more of the black tac gear-wearing Hostiles sweeping through. Obviously, they were here for me. Us.  

The StupidEvilHostiles were generally causing a ruckus down there and pushing people aside, the few travelers just getting in or going out for the day. One of the humans who worked in the hotel tried to step in front of them, and a Hostile pointed a projectile at xim. 

RecepBot had a total fit and pinged me like twenty times in a row. 

By now I had already stood up and stationed my drone in front of the door. I urgently shook Khelida and told her to wake up. 

She blinked sleepily, then shot awake. “SecUnit?” she asked, clutching her toy to her chest. “What—” 

“Get your shoes on,” I said, and shoved her few items into her backpack. Then I wrestled it onto her shoulders and picked her up. “Everything is fine,” I added belatedly, realizing this might be distressing for an adolescent. “We just have to go.”

I sent RecepBot an affirmative that I was coming to help but then told it I needed to guarantee my client safety first. It understood about this and directed me to a small hatch for the laundry bots. It even sent me a schematic of the hotel with the laundry chutes highlighted, which I didn’t even know were there. 

We darted out into the hallway. 

I needed my little drone for what was looking like it was going to be a fight, but I absolutely could not leave Khelida unprotected. So I gave her the sparkly toy drone, which had a camera even though it was kind of a terrible one. 

“I need to take care of something,” I said. “Take care of this for me. And if you need help, tell the drone.” 

She nodded, more in a way she was trying to show she was being brave than she actually wanted to do anything I was telling her to do. “You’ll be okay?” 

I don’t know why she was asking me, since she was the one about to be taken away from the thing with guns in its arms when she had people after her. 

“I’m always okay,” I said. “Are… you?” 

She said, clutching the stuffed thing, “I will be.” 

There was a laundry cart; I hefted her up and into it, then pushed it into the entryway of the laundry shaft. 

“Great,” I said. “Can you say, ‘whee’?” 

“Um, whee?” she said. I shoved the laundry cart into the shaft. “Wheeee— aw, shiiit!” 

For both our sakes I decided not to tell her parents about that as a laundry bot caught the cart midway down and whisked it down the tunnels. They were moving away from this area quite rapidly, and it was actually a pretty good escape route, especially for a small thing like Khelida.

I was watching her drone, and had already asked the laundry bot to take extra good care of her, but still, illogically, I hesitated outside the hatch for a moment longer. I knew I had to leave her, and that she would be fine, but still I was weirdly hesitant to leave her alone. 

Then the elevator beeped, waiting for me to take an express ride to the bottom, and I startled out of it and bolted. 

I started going down the elevator but decided it was too slow because I saw on the lobby footage that one person had fired a projectile weapon, even though it was just in warning. 

Instead I wound my fist back and punched directly through the transparent material of the elevator. It spiderwebbed with cracks, which was enough for me to take a running start and jump right out of it. 

I was still about two levels up, so I crashed through the elevator and onto the floor of the lobby to quite a bit of alarm. I landed on my feet in a crouch and bared my teeth at the surprised StupidEvilHostiles. 

Finally one of them recovered enough to shout, “There it is!” (Yeah, good detective work, buddy) but by then I was already deploying the weapons in my arms. 

The other humans were also screaming and running now in a slightly more terrified manner. They had clearly realized what I was and were scared in a different way than before. The human hotel manager squirmed out of grip and bolted.

This was good, because there were less targets, and now a lot of them had started to actually get out of the wya. With all the attention focused on me, no one tried to shoot them or take hostages. 

The RecepBot was not designed to move from behind the counter at any great speed, and only had rudimentary treads for moving around. The Hostiles had tipped it over and damaged its right arm. It was squirming, trying to get up. 

“Were you looking for me?” I asked. This obviously unnerved at least one of them who hadn’t realized I could talk. I stopped running any semblance of the babysitterbot code and focused on scaring them as much as possible. 

One on the front, probably the leader and now the new StupidEvilHostile 1, stepped forward. “Where’s the girl?” 

I said, “What’s it to you?” 

I know, great response. I think I got it out of a serial. 

Hostile 1 made an annoyed sound. “We’re getting that kid.” I doubt it was really about Khelida at this point, or at least not in the way they’d originally intended. Now we were just loose ends, which had to be cleaned up or else Cordillera was going to be very unpleased. 

I shifted my stance. “Maybe, except you made a mistake.”

“And what was that?” 

“Well,” I said, “You let all the humans get away.”

The lobby was cleared out by now. The RecepBot was still downed, but it was behind the counter so was unlikely to be hit with any stray shots. With the big elevator broken (oops) the humans in the rooms above us couldn’t use it. There were a few emergency exits they could use if they needed to get out, but really what I cared about was that they couldn’t come in here and refill the hostage pool. 

I didn’t have to worry about collateral damage. 

The Hostiles may have realized this, or maybe they just caught a look at an expression my face was making, because they suddenly became very nervous. 

Finally a few of them got with the program and started to shoot, but I was already moving. 

First I turned off all the lights down here. My vision filters easily adjusted, but even if the Hostiles had vision goggles too, it would take them some time to put them on. 

Before they could really register the sudden darkness, I was already darting forward. There were eight Hostiles in all. I had a good view of two of them from my drone camera, and an okay view of the rest from the hotel security cameras, which I had already hacked so no one else was seeing this. 

Hostile 1 had already gotten unwisely close to me. I took advantage of this, and sprung forward. I grabbed them before they knew I was doing it, and launched them over my shoulder. They went flying and hit another Hostile so that both of them went down. 

I fired an energy weapon from my gunports that made sure they both stayed that way. The others had realized by now I was causing trouble so had pinpointed my location and were shooting at me again.

I backflipped out of range and into the shadows. 

One of the humans had an illumination device on them, which they clicked on. At least one also must have been an augmented human with their own vision filters too, because soon the illumination hit me and the shots started getting more accurate. 

This time I ran up the wall, sprung off an information kiosk, and came down from above to kick a Hostile in the face. Then I used their body as cover for a Hostile in front of me, and shot backwards at one behind me. 

I was actually kind of upset— how had Cordillera found us? I had been very careful and hadn’t thought we’d been followed digitally or physically back here. None of the Hostiles were talking outwardly on the feed, but they had attempted a puny network just between themselves so they could coordinate battle logistics. 

I tapped into that easily and sifted through their communications. They were mostly just alarmed exclamations about a SecUnit they thought was only tasked to protect its client suddenly becoming murdery. 

They'd been tipped off about me being at the hotel from someone who saw the SecUnit alert. 

From digging a little deeper I could see that it had been sent from a hotel guest. You had to be kidding me. It was the two busybodies who'd accosted me before. It was annoying to think they actually thought they were being nice. No one was ever nice to the bots. 

A Hostile got up close. I used my energy weapons and shot their shoulder so they let go of me with that arm. When they didn't let go with the other I just used the hand on my shoulder to spin them, flinging them across the room. 

I darted across the lobby, firing as I went. 

One of the augmented humans had been working on getting the power back up. Obviously they couldn’t beat my code, but they surprised me by going around the light system and instead activating the big holographic display, which I had only turned off and not actually shut down. It burst into life with a lot of color, throwing the room into splotches of multicolored light. 

That was actually quite clever. 

I took a couple more shots but the Hostiles were all taking good cover by now, and the renewed light source seemed to be giving them some courage. 

Station Security was finally coming— corrupt as they may have been, it would be impossible to ignore what was surely several panicked calls from the fleeing guests— so I didn’t technically have to win this fight. 

I mean, I liked to win, and I had to get away before any kind of authority showed up (even if they weren’t evil, stations really don’t like finding out there’s a rogue SecUnit running around) but I didn’t need to permanently neutralize everyone. I was sure there were far more reinforcements than what was here, and taking them out wouldn’t solve the problem permanently. 

More importantly, the injured parts in my knee had broken through the organics again and my leg was leaking. 

I took a couple more shots and decided not to disable the holographic display. 

Instead I stole from my own playbook and hacked into the display. I brought the display downward, to the floor at the stretch of the projector’s range. I made a big toothy fauna image lunge at several Hostiles. They had to know it wasn’t real, but they still flinched back and one of them fell backwards and clonked his ass.

It was enough of a distraction. I bolted out of the main lobby and went out a side exit, not bothering to hide where I was going. Obviously I wanted them to know I had left so they wouldn’t stick around or look for Khelida here. 

They had someone stationed on the outside but I had sent my drone ahead of me and it gave me warning. I slammed the door into their face and knocked them over. I was all ready to give them an extra kick and everything, but I had accidentally fully knocked them out on the first try. 

Hey, mark one down for Murderbot. Not like I was getting a lot of other wins lately. 

I went down the alleyway at a full run and launched myself up over a fire escape and on top of a nearby building. 

No one followed me— no one could make that jump. 

Khelida’s drone showed that she was a-okay, so I took my time circling back around to the hotel. Not too much time; the laundry bots were all trying to entertain her, doing either a demented ballet or a bragging demonstration of their anti-collision capabilities. Presumably a laundry bot was stupid enough to think a human could find this impressive. 

Eventually I limped into a connecting maintenance building and climbed into a laundry shaft. 

I didn’t want to ping RecepBot itself in case Security was in its systems trying to find trace of the rogue SecUnit causing so much trouble. But the laundry bots answered my coded messages on the feed easily enough, and even sent a cart to take me into the humid, steamy laundry facility. 

Khelida was there on top of a stack of clean blankets, watching the laundry bots. 

“Okay, that was actually kind of fun,” she said. “But if you leave me like that again, I’m going to be really mad.”

It was fair. I tapped her feed in tired acknowledgement. 

Then I opened another connection with Mensah. She answered almost immediately, even though she probably should have been still asleep too. It wasn’t like I could blame her. This was a bad situation. 

And I really, really needed to do something about it. It was time to actually take action, not just sit around hiding. I’ve never been very good at that. 

Eventually we left the laundry facility. (Khelida ate her breakfast meal pack, and all us bots/constructs had to pretend not to be grossed out.)

I knew where I was going, so Khelida and I slipped back out into the crowd. 

I was running my human code again. Probably acting like an augmented human instead of the CareUnit again wasn’t much of a cover, but at least it might slow down our pursuers a little bit. I deleted us from all the footage as we walked, and forced myself not to walk too quickly or purposefully. Humans are easily distracted; this is a key part in pretending to be one. 

Eventually the multi-storied Port Authority building loomed in front of us. 

I’m aware this seems like probably the last place we should have been right now. 

But there was logic to it. 

There was a woman there working as a junior Port Authority agent. I’d checked out her dossier, because I’d checked out pretty much everyone’s dossier before I’d decided to trust Mensah’s safety on this stupid planet. She had gone to the Pansystem University of Mihara and New Tideland.

This didn’t guarantee she was an anti-corporate spy, of course. Presumably plenty of students went in and out of ART’s university without ever encountering their more illicit activities. But she had taken two semesters on Holism (another artificial intelligence ship, who ART thinks is the most annoying thing ever and who Three adores) and she had several suspicious gaps in her work timeline. Not to mention that for someone with an advanced degree from an unincorporated system, it was weird to say the least that she was here so close to a major transportation hub by the CR. 

Mensah had agreed with my assessment that she was almost certainly still working in some way against the corporates. Being Port Authority, that probably meant a lot of work on the spacedocks. 

Which meant she could get people out. 

I couldn’t establish a secure feed to her yet without being familiar with her feed signature. Luckily, Amena had beat me here and I was already on a secure connection with her. 

She responded to my ping excitedly and sent me a sigil of confetti exploding. Why this signifies something exciting and not startling and mildly terrifying perplexes me. 

Anyway Amena was there to pick up her sister. I couldn't get into Security because even if I hacked all their weapons scanners, the humans there might wonder about me, which would be bad. 

Luckily, there was a back window with easily hackable security locks and surveillance. 

I went around to it and triggered it to open. Amena immediately stuck her head out of it. She beamed when she saw me and Khelida. 

Amena had been slightly easier to sneak away from the hotel than Mensah. They were keeping a much less close eye on her (Amena has never escaped from corporate kidnapping in the company of a murderous SecUnit, at least as far as anybody knows). So Mensah had distracted them by giving another small press conference (saying pretty much nothing new, which is how all press conferences go) and Amena had been able to get to the port safely enough. 

“Mena! Mena!” Khelida said, reaching up her arms. 

I easily boosted her up and into the window, where her sister dragged her the rest of the way in. Amena settled her on her hip and gave a kiss to her hair. “Khelli-Khel! Did you have fun with SecUnit?” she asked. 

“Yeah!” Khelida said. 

Amena glanced down at me but then after a brief once-over politely fixed her eyes on the wall behind me. “Are you sure you’re not coming with us?” Amena asked. “Mx. Achille said she’s sure she can get all three of us passage off the station without being noticed.” 

“Dr. Mensah is still here,” I said. 

Amena tilted her head; she knew she had already lost the argument on that one. “Still,” she said. “I worry about you all alone. I know Second Mom will be here, but I wish there was someone else to rely on too.” 

“SecUnit has really fun bot friends,” Khelida informed her. “They were nice to me! And it bought me a stuffed cat!” 

Amena looked amused. “Yeah?”

“No,” I said. “And I’ll be fine. I will retrieve Dr. Mensah and we’ll join the rest of your family unit at a later date when it is clear.” 

She frowned at me, unconvinced, but then she looked back at Khelida and apparently didn’t want to continue the argument. “Okay. We’ll get off the station, but only because I know you’ll be able to work better if you’re not worrying about us all the time.” 

“I don’t worry.” 

Amena snorted. “Okay, that’s a bald-faced lie. But I feel like being nice today, so I’m going to ignore it. Our transport is in dock right now— we need to get there in the next fifteen minutes.” 

“I’ll watch on the cameras,” I said. 

“I never doubted that you would,” Amena said, rolling her eyes, which is a trait I’ve observed in 86.8 percent of all human teenagers. “Just remember to be careful for once, okay?” 

Before I could answer, Khelida added, “Remember that you’re my friend. And you have lots of friends!” 

No I did not. Stupid human child. 

I said, “Here, take this with you. I can have a closer watch on you from here.” 

Amena snorted. “This is not your usual kind of drone.”

That was right, and I couldn’t really afford to lose it. But I really, really didn’t like the idea of them leaving through the port without me watching. 

I said, “Shut up.” 

“Good one,” Amena said. “Hey, I brought you a present.”

She passed me a box. When I looked inside, it was the two drones I’d assigned to her, as well as two more from the drone perimeter. 

I turned away to face the wall. “You were supposed to keep these to protect you.” 

“I’m leaving the planet,” Amena reminded me. “And while they may have tried to dive-bomb anyone else who got close to me— hilarious, by the way— they let me get really close so I could deactivate them. I figured you could use some more. Well, okay, me and Second Mom came up with the idea.”

With five drones, I had way more of a chance here. Like, a lot more. I let them all activate and they formed a perimeter around me. Mensah lies to Station Security for me wherever we go to tell them I need drones as an accessibility aid. But now I was feeling relieved like that was actually true. 

I made sure I was still facing the wall. “Thank you for your input,” my buffer said. 

A drone caught Amena’s smile. But she didn’t say anything, and instead she turned to glance behind her. “We need to get going. Are you sure? I don’t mind sending Khelida off and coming back to help you.” 

“The only worse thing than trusting a SecUnit to monitor a child is trusting no one to monitor a child,” I said. 

The Port Authority agent, Achille, came up behind them and gestured them towards the exit. 

“Okay, bye, SecUnit!” Amena said. “Say bye!” 

“Bye!” Khelida said. 

As they ventured deeper in, I followed their progress on the glitter drone. I heard Khelida say, “Aww, I wanted to stay with it! It’s fun!” 

I moved to a more secure location, erased our presence from the Port Authority logs, and watched their path from the station to the docks, which was luckily not far away. I tracked them safely through, onto a cargoliner where the human captain specifically did not ask any questions, and then watched as the liner took off from the port. 

Then I watched the drone as far as my connection would allow, all the way until it cut out. 

They would be safe. They should probably be safe. 

Now it was time to focus on Mensah. Amena was right, this really was easier to do when I didn’t have to focus on anyone else. But I guess I’ve gotten used to working with humans. 

It was time to do my job, at last.

For now, I couldn’t do anything with my stupid leg being all stupid. 

But I actually had an idea about that. 

And I was going to have to listen to a juvenile human’s advice. Reminder to self: don’t tell ART. 

The whole block around the hotel was cordoned off by investigators. They looked like they were mostly scratching their heads, although judging by feed messages at least a few of them knew Mensah’s SecUnit had probably been involved. 

Whatever, as long as they didn’t find me and lock me up somewhere for someone from Cordillera to murder me, I didn’t really care. 

(Actually, they wouldn’t be able to lock me up. But then I’d have to choose between killing everyone so they wouldn’t take me in and going in on my own free will, which were both terrible options. Better to avoid it altogether.

I didn’t have to go inside the hotel anyway; I could ping RecepBot from here. 

It filled my feed with information and alerts, one after another. I guess it had decided I was part of its internal security system. 

It seemed like it and all the augmented humans and humans in the hotel at the time of the second attempted kidnapping were all fine. Management wasn’t happy but RecepBot’s general manager, the one I’d saved, was insisting that I was not the aggressor in the incident which was a very nice and surprising change of pace. 

I had to soothe RecepBot a bit before I could get it to calm down. Most of the incidents it had seen involved, like, normal human hotel crimes (domestic disputes, inappropriate bodily fluid incidents, drunk and disorderlies, etc.) so it was upset about the danger to its guests. 

Eventually it seemed to chill out (after I gave it a security system patch so its weapons scanners on the entrance wouldn’t be so entirely useless) and gave me the information I needed. 

I followed its instructions and went down to the bot repair yard. 

It was actually a warehouse, I guess. I don’t know what the difference is between a yard or a workshop or a machine shop or whatever. 

So I went into the yard (I’m calling it a yard) and pinged BuildingSys. It was entirely automated so there was no human to wonder about a weird new bot coming in for repairs. And no one had ever programmed BuildingSys to turn away a bot that needed repair, because, well, why would they? There are not a lot of rogue bots running around and if there were most of them would go murdering or something instead of getting their boo-boos fixed. 

Not that there was going to be much fixing of my actual injuries here. The repair machines could work on other machines, not humans, so they’d have no idea what to do with my organic parts. 

The building was a little bit damp with mechanical steam but otherwise clean and undecorated. There were a couple logos for different corporations scattered here and there at stations— for bots that were proprietary or whatever— but they were all sent here because it’s much easier to only set this up once. 

BuildingSys gave me an acknowledging and slightly warm response. RecepBot had called ahead to warn it. 

System system, I sent. 

System system, it acknowledged cheerfully. It was a system that interacted solely with bots all day long, so it didn’t really bother to have that kind of machine accent systems can develop when they have to talk to humans all the time. Repair - needed. Proceed: Cubicle 3. 

Okay, I didn’t want to use a cubicle even if it wasn’t the same kind I was used to. Whatever, I was being a wimp about it so I went there anyway and peeled off my disguise clothing, which was really gross with blood and other stuff. 

BuildingSys paused in confusion. Query: bot? 

I sent back, Response: Construct. 

It asked for a definition so I sent one (minus the murdering and stuff). It seemed worried. Query: diagnostic/repair protocols? 

I sent it my diagnostic and highlighted the things it could actually do anything about. What I wanted it to do was fix the messed-up machinery in my knee, and if it could, to get another bullet out of where it had lodged in a metallic rib. 

The system hesitated again and I almost scoffed. I didn’t really want to waste time and energy negotiating with this thing. I don’t like hacking bots to make them do what I want, but I’d do it if I had to or if it tried to alert any humans. 

Query: this will hurt you? 

Oh. 

Response: pain receptors: set to minimum. 

It dawdled some more, so I added an extremely urgent tag to my request. 

I guess that worked because it brought out its apparatus. It was a lot like a MedSys, although obviously built for bots instead. The arms in its cubicles were essentially big multi-tools. 

It tapped into my system through the port in my arm (the one in my neck doesn’t work anymore) and I let it poke around in there as much as I was willing to stand. It pulled a schematic and then switched tools. I watched in fascination as it gently cut the skin on my leg, almost painlessly. 

I was impressed, because even ART didn’t have that. I queried it curiously, and it informed me that it was a tool meant for splitting open rubber/synthetic skin on bots that need more manual dexterity. 

From there I mostly tuned out and watched Sanctuary Moon. Getting operated on, fully conscious, is never a fun experience, and definitely not with a system unused to operating on something that could bleed. It was actually being very careful, though. I got the feeling it took a lot of pride in taking care of the bots that came through here. I must have been an interesting challenge for it. 

After two and a half episodes of my show (I had to stop in the middle of the arc where the colony solicitor is framed for a murder actually committed by her dead father’s girlfriend’s wife, but that was okay because I had seen it before) it was done. 

My leg joint was fixed, and the projectile had come out of my ribs. It had also apparently disapproved of the last repairs on my system and had fixed my gunport so it slid up more easily and quickly. 

The knee was bleeding still, but it was definitely better and I could probably repair it with another commercially available med-pack. At least that was what I thought, but then BuildingSys offered me a replacement rubber coating it used when repairing that kind of bot. 

I’m not sure it’ll take to the synthetic skin, I said doubtfully. 

If it was ART, it would have gotten offended. Instead it said, Response: analysis of materials reveals materials compatible. Great. So my skin was basically rubber in its mind. Whatever. I could get it fixed later. 

It gave me some patches I was able to apply myself. I watched in fascination as the rubber conformed to my skin and then essentially grafted on. It was bluer, and definitely not mistakable for something human, but it worked well and had the benefit of no infection risk and no pain (no skin cells or nerves there, so I couldn’t feel anything with them, which is why I assume the company didn’t just use that stuff to make us in the first place). 

I almost said thanks with my actual mouth, but then I just pinged it a System: acknowledged which I think it took to mean the same thing. 

It sent me a bill almost apologetically, but I had expected that. Normally it would get sent back to the bots’ owners, but seeing as I didn’t have one I had to improvise. I sent it to the two women who had ratted out me and Khelida. They’d probably be able to dispute the charges, but it gave me way more satisfaction than it should have. 

(Well, technically I had an owner. But I don’t like thinking about that and billing this operation to Mensah was a terrible idea in a great variety of ways. So I didn’t.)

I stood up and tested my leg. Well, not good as new, but I was back up at 97% efficiency, I had a couple more drones, and I was definitely feeling better about the world. 

BuildingSys even had a small fabricator, which it used to make a set of passable if not amazingly high-quality clothing. Back in my favored style of clothes, with the blood washed off me, and my knee working again… 

Yeah, Cordillera had better watch out. 

Obviously my CareUnit ruse had been thoroughly blown, so I went back to pretending to be an augmented human and ran my act-like-a-human code. Hopefully the switching back and forth would confuse them. Without Khelida, too, I blended in a lot better. 

It turns out people pay closer attention to children than I knew, probably because they’re always getting themselves into trouble. Mensah says it’s because people naturally have an instinct to protect children, but I saw enough children in the company to know that’s not true. 

I went to a different food court, ordered something random off a menu, and sat at a table, pushing it around like humans do when they’re preoccupied with something. 

Then I sank into the feed. Mensah already knew that Amena and Khelida had made it off-station. I had obviously sent her a status update as soon as one was available. I knew she would want to know. 

Now, me and Mensah were putting the rest of our plan into action. 

She sent me the draft of a message. Is this too unbelievably evil? she asked. 

These are the Corporates, I said. 

Right. More evil. 

The message, composed by both of us: 

Willing to negotiate for safe return of my daughter. Private contract only. Will bring files only to neutral location. Require proof of life first. 

We were assuming Cordillera didn’t know we had gotten back in contact with each other. So they could go on pretending they had Khelida all they wanted, and she’d never be able to prove otherwise. 

We were also assuming Cordillera would buy Mensah’s ruthless move. They’d believe Mensah had said one thing publicly in the press— that she wouldn’t hand anything over for Khelida— and was doing another. If she had been a corporate, it would have been her move. She wanted her daughter but if anyone knew she’d given in to a ransom, her reputation would be ruined. 

Yes, you can sign a contract on the terms of a kidnapping. It happens all the time. Usually it included the ransom payment on one side and a promise of confidentiality on the other. This kind of agreement is totally illegal on Preservation, but even if they knew that they must have thought Mensah, as former planetary leader, would have done such shady dealings before. (Pretty much all planetary leaders have. My humans, as usual, were the rare exception.)

I gave my agreement, and Mensah sent the message off.

There was a little bit of tense waiting— I was really happy to have my drones back and able to look at the whole food court without having to resort to my actual eyes— and then we got a response back. 

We had only included the part about proof of life because I thought someone would reasonably ask for it. (And they do it on serials a lot, okay, fine.) but they had spent an insultingly short time making a crappy mockup of Khelida, a very short video where she sat in a chair and looked at the camera. 

I didn’t think Mensah would fall for that but I still flagged all the erroneous parts of the code they’d used to create it (there were a lot of them) and sent them to her right away. 

Do I detect professional pride? she laughed, but I could still tell she was relieved. 

I actually was a little offended at how sloppily they had put together the fake, but I added, in a very slightly put-upon tone, Even Gurathin could do better. And I was rewarded with a bright burst of amusement through the feed. 

Still, Mensah pretended to buy it and sent them coordinates for a meeting spot. 

They protested and said they wanted to choose the location. Obviously this was a terrible idea, essentially asking to get murdered/kidnapped. I didn't care that much about this point but I thought they'd never believe Mensah was dumb enough to fall for it. So she insisted on choosing the location but gave a way too generous lead-time— two hours before meetup. 

They pretended to be sad about it but I assume were secretly clicking their heels. They agreed to the time and place. 

Plenty of time to get into position for all sorts of nefarious things. 

Guess what, that goes both ways. 

I got there early; it was a crowded shopping area in the port. In theory this was way safer because the ports have weapons scanners built in. Of course, since we had already presupposed they had an in with Security, they would probably be able to smuggle in almost anything they could want. 

And then there was me, of course, who learned how to hack weapons scanners as almost my first ever act as a free agent. 

The port had its own small shopping area for blah-blah-blah reasons, something about import taxes or good restrictions. I don't know, Mensah, who was the one who suggested the area, tried to explain it but I really didn't care. 

Anyway, there were two levels, lots of places to duck in and out of, and a lot of crowd cover. Perfect.  

Mensah was still being watched, obviously, so we couldn’t meet up before the meeting, even though I think both of us wanted to. That was okay, because she was going to have to come out eventually to draw the last people in. 

Until then it was my job to make sure that was safe. 

I got to the port shops with plenty of time and spread my drones out over the area. That plus the local cameras and assorted other sensors and maps (there was one that tracked where you stopped so it could ping you with local sales) meant I was almost feeling at home here.

Cordillera had certainly made itself at home here. It must have sent operatives the second Mensah had given them the meeting location. They were spread out already at various strategic points. 

I still had a lot of time, so I leisurely mapped out their locations and tagged them with bright markers on my feed. I made sure to make a thorough sweep— they had some in plainclothes— but I was sure I was missing a few. 

I decided to go systematically. 

Here we go. 

First one: A Cordillera hostile in the black tac vest uniform was crouching on the roof of a three-story building, with a clear line of sight to the bench Mensah was supposed to be attending the meeting at. 

I yoinked them back by the collar, applied my stun weapons at minimum to the back of their neck, and they immediately slumped over in unconsciousness. 

I propped them up so if anyone looked they’d still see a human leaning on the side of the building here, and set their private feed status as ACTIVE. I also hacked into that and found the location of all the others they’d brought with them. 

Second one: An augmented human was hiding in a maintenance tunnel with a nasty-looking sniper rifle.

That one was easier, because I just overrode their augments and told them to knock them out. They slumped over and I didn’t even have to get into the tunnel. 

The third one: A human was pretending to window-shop and pushing one of the wheeled things humans use for their young when they’re too lazy to carry them. A scan revealed the wheeled thing was empty and was just covered with a blanket. 

I spoofed a feed message from the roof human, and told them to meet them in a blind corner between buildings. 

They went around with the wheeled thing and came face-to-face with me, who shoved their face into the cloth on the wheeled thing and hit them on the back of the head. I hacked into the back lock of a nearby store (BOOTS N STUFF) and shoved them in behind some crates. 

The fourth— Okay, you’re getting the gist here. Imagine this scenario, but fourteen times. 

By then it was nearing Mensah’s meeting time, so I found a fire escape I could climb up and still be invisible from the street. There were no Cordillera people up there, because apparently even with a lot of lead time they’re not even that good at their jobs. 

I turned off all my human code; I was so still I wouldn’t register on any scans and most humans, who have abysmal self-awareness anyway, wouldn’t be drawn to any movement. 

I amused myself by keeping the comm chatter active by spoofing all the people I’d already taken out. This was partially so whoever was coming next wouldn’t notice the sudden absence of feed presences, but also partially because it was better than sitting here worrying. 

Eventually Mensah came into the shopping center, and all my senses went on high alert. I forked off a separate process to keep imitating feed chatter. I was using spy talk from the serial Mechanical Advantage, which was about a bunch of people who stole things from the corporates and wore disguises and unrealistically flipped through non-standard sized vents into art galleries. It was a good show. 

I kept track; there were at least two real feed presences I hadn’t taken out yet. 

Despite this and my instincts, I watched Mensah walk out, unprotected, and didn’t do anything about it. 

She looked tired in person but well. It was a great relief to me. I risked tapping her feed, just once, so she would know I was there, and could see the lines around her eyes relax. 

Mensah went to the bench, arranged her caftan around her feet (which were wearing more sensible, less fall-off-able shoes)(shut up, I know that’s not a word) and sat there calmly. I had to admire it. She looked like she was conducting a regular day of business.

It was already three minutes past her proposed meeting time, but still Cordillera made her wait another two point three minutes before they showed up. 

The feed was suddenly full of reminders that everyone was to wait until the ransom was passed over before they murdered Mensah. How considerate. I felt my lip curl. 

Finally a man in a neat skirt and high-collared shirt, the standard business clothes of this station, appeared. My threat analysis tagged him as most likely the person meeting with Mensah, and there was a 63% probability he had a knife. 

His feed presence confirmed he had sent the order as he got closer, subvocalizing. 

I put much of my attention on the drone tasked to listening to their conversation and went looking for the last Hostile. I finally found them out in the open, watching Mensah and the mystery person carefully. 

I think they had noticed that some of their undercover agents had abandoned their posts. (That is what I’m calling being deeply unconscious and tied up in various nooks and crannies). But they weren’t willing to raise the alarm yet, especially not with their private feed still technically active.

They were going to be tough to sneak up on, especially if any of the teams had reported back on what I looked like. 

Mensah was eyeing the first person. He said, “Hello. You’re Dr. Mensah?” 

“I’d really rather get down to business,” Mensah said. 

“You’re Mensah,” he confirmed with a friendly smile. “Can I call you Ayda?” 

“No.”

Meanwhile I went down my fire escape and into the nearest store. The person standing at the front smiled widely when she saw me. “Welcome!” she said. “Are you here for cosmetic augments? Let me say, I think you would look just beautiful with purple hair. Or maybe something to cover up those augments, make them look a little more natural…?”

“I’m a bot technician,” I said. “You have a cleaning bot here. I need it.” 

“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m really allowed to—”

Meanwhile the cleaning bot I had pinged from the roof allowed me to connect with it in here and it cheerfully trundled up to me. 

There’s a really really big mess outside, I told it. 

It pinged back and started racing for the door. 

“As you can see,” I told the shopkeeper, “I already have authorization.” 

And then I left. She didn’t try to stop me— who would steal a cleaning bot? Who would even care enough to get it back if it was stolen? 

I opened the door and let the bot trundle into the street, little sweeping attachments spinning furiously. In the feed I tagged the second hostile as ‘extraneous matter’, meaning the bot would really want to clean it up.

Mensah was still having her conversation, and though I was interested in Mensah’s safety I wasn't really interested in the fine points of hostage negotiation. Especially when there is no hostage. The guy was telling her all she had to do was pass over the info and her beloved daughter would be returned to her. Mensah was replying that she had no guarantee her daughter was even nearby or that she would get her when she was done. 

Gone was the pretend-naive Mensah; she was negotiating now as deftly as if lives really were in danger. 

The cleaning bot beeped out into the street, went neatly around several pedestrians (detouring slightly to clean up a sticky drink stain) and then rammed directly into the second hostile. 

They turned. “What the?” 

The cleaning bot was just a little one, not even human-form but pretty much designed just to hold cleaning apparatus… es. Apparati. Whatever. Reassuringly, it beeped a pre-programmed phrase to their feed telling them not to worry, it would clean up the mess right away! 

The human, maybe understandably, didn’t really want to be cleaned up. They backed up, and then, when it kept advancing, tried to kick it. 

Now that was just rude. 

Luckily they had backed into range of me, who was now standing just outside the shop door. I went forward, unbalanced them because their one foot was still raised for a kick, and yanked them sideways into the alleyway. 

They got pulled, whether they liked it or not (they did not) and I pressed my energy weapon against their spine and let off a low-level stun pulse. They slumped into unconsciousness. 

Don’t worry, I told the cleaner bot. I cleaned up the mess. 

It gave me a happy little beep and then ambled back into the store. I held the door for it again. 

I scanned the private feed again. Uh-oh. The man talking to Mensah was starting to get suspicious too. 

They must have had some sort of code word between themselves, because my conversation clones were still chattering happily among themselves. The blackmailer backed completely out of the feed and glared at Mensah. 

“What is this?” he asked angrily. 

Mensah didn’t so much as blink. “Well, I thought it was a hostage negotiation.”

“You’re up to something,” he said suspiciously. He got to his feet and started to back away from her just a little, reaching into his jacket. 

That was not something I liked. I was still far enough away I couldn’t get there easily, but I could get there. The question was whether it was worth going at my top speed and definitely scaring all the humans around me. Plus alerting the bad guy, but whatever. 

I decided to just go around the edges of the crowd, at a quicker pace than someone out for a stroll but not something alarming yet. Maybe just someone in a hurry on their way somewhere, unless you noticed that I was a murderbot with guns for arms. 

Mensah was still calm and cool. Maybe a little angry, underneath it all. “Not me,” she said. “Are you sure you want to draw that gun?”

“Very much so.” 

This was the part where we needed Mensah. As much as I prefer to do these things on my own, I can admit (reluctantly) that sometimes my humans really come in handy. 

For example, it is not a crime to point a projectile weapon at a SecUnit. In fact, some might say that it is in fact common sense. I mean, basically if a SecUnit is after you your only chance is to shoot them before they shoot you. 

Anyway, it is a crime to point a projectile weapon at a human, especially a human who’s really important and beloved in the Preservation Alliance. 

And now this guy was doing it. Mensah looked at the gun with her fists clenched. 

I really didn’t like it now. I don’t let my humans get weapons pointed at them, which even someone half-assing their security job will tell you is one of the basics. 

With that I put on a little burst of speed and I stepped in front of the weapon. 

People had finally started to notice the situation (about ten seconds too late, but that’s humans for you) and had started to run, scatter, etc. People, because people are always the same, were also sticking around to point, gape, and record the incident. 

The man twitched, but didn’t reflexively shoot me, which was kind of impressive. 

I could feel Mensah at my back. Performance reliability went up again, just incrementally.  

“You’re the SecUnit,” he said angrily. “You weren’t supposed to be able to contact her.” 

“I also wasn’t supposed to be able to hack your feed ID so that it’s public,” I said, with a dead-eyed stare that suggested maybe the rumors about rogue SecUnits were true.  

He startled and I could see him checking his feed ID. There it was, his legal name and everything and his corporate affiliations. He panicked and tried to change it back to the null status but obviously I wouldn’t let him. 

“Everyone knows who the man holding the gun is,” Mensah said. “Would you like them to know you as a murderer, too?” 

She seemed to have a lot of faith that the answer was no. I had no such illusions, having spent a lot of time with very terrible humans. It seems to me that the reaction of 98% of humans when faced with a request to stop their behavior continue to do that thing even harder. 

His finger wavered on the trigger. I made sure to record that to my archives for the incoming security team and decided I was done with this guy. I slapped the projectile weapon out of the way, rotated my wrist, and disarmed him. 

I kicked him in the knee (the same one his guys had shot me in. Yes it was a little petty) and he dropped hard onto both his knees on the ground. 

I pointed the projectile weapon at him. “Please remain here for the proper authorities,” I said. 

There was the wail of a StationSec siren. 

We’re not idiots (usually I’m not an idiot). Mensah had called the cops. 

Sure, we couldn’t trust them, or at least an unknown number of them. But, no matter how much they had been paid, they couldn’t be paid to cover up a big incident like this once it had been made public. The whole station’s reputation would be ruined. 

People were recording, and watching, and I thought it would be pretty clear in the aftermath that this guy was the aggressor and force had been justified against him. 

“Dr. Mensah, are you all right?” I asked. 

Behind me, my drone could see her reaching out to squeeze my shoulder, but then drawing back. I butted my shoulder slightly backwards so that her warm fingers brushed my upper arm. She smiled. 

“I’m fine,” she said. “Are you okay? I’m really glad to see you.” 

The man scowled. “This was a trick?” he said. “You knew this thing had your daughter all along? Who purposely sends a SecUnit off with their child?”

“Someone who trusts their child will be protected to the ends of the earths,” Mensah said. The confidence with which she said it freaked me out a little bit, I’m not going to lie. I don’t know, maybe she was bluffing to get one over on this guy. It was something I would do. But I am more spiteful than Mensah is. 

The guy seemed surprised too. He didn’t say anything, but perhaps it was because I was still pointing a weapon at him. 

My drones (it was really nice to have more than one drone) saw Security approaching at a fast clip. The Port Authority person that may or may not have been an anti-corporate spy, Achille, was among them. There were about three dozen of them, which seemed unusually high for just one human who was even disarmed by now. 

Oh crap. I realized suddenly what this looked like just as the security forces got close enough to see us with their actual eyes. 

Hurriedly I dropped the projectile weapon and kicked it so he couldn’t pick it back up. Mensah looked at me like I was crazy but I was already raising my hands unthreateningly in the air. 

Unfortunately for all of us a SecUnit’s weapons are in its arms so this did not have the effect I was hoping. 

“Holy shit!!” someone said. “It really is a SecUnit!” 

“No, wait—” that was Mensah, and Port Authority Agent Achille at the same time— but it was too late. 

With some resignation I let the electrified security net hit me. 

At least it was a non-lethal crowd control tool, so basically what it did was zap me a lot. It was supposed to knock a human unconscious, but for me it knocked several of my inputs out and mildly burned my organic parts. 

“Ahh!” someone said, freaked out when the net didn’t seem to get rid of me immediately. 

I had fallen when the net hit me and several of my joints locked up. I rolled my eyes as hard as I possibly could in extreme exasperation. 

“I hate everything,” I told Mensah, earnestly. My vocal mechanisms were spasming slightly. She was watching me with horrified eyes. 

The screamy Sec agent gestured to another one, who turned up the dial on the electricity net past its safe maximum. 

My displays all flashed SYSTEM ERROR. I lost the last of my inputs and went into system restart. 

Remember when I said I hate everything? Yeah. Sticking to it. 

Mensah busted me out eventually. 

Luckily they had also scooped up the bad guy in the same arrest since so many people had seen him pointing the gun at me and Mensah. Apparently a couple people had booed when I went down and that guy didn't. So I guess that's nice. 

I didn't really appreciate waking up in a Station Security cell and briefly considered breaking out and/or finally getting around to that mass murdering thing. 

Luckily Mensah came and got me before I could even get through a whole calming episode of Sanctuary Moon. 

Everybody was really apologetic when they found out I was the one who ‘rescued’ Kehlida from her kidnappers and returned her to her family. Station Sec had been shitting bricks over the optics of losing a juvenile human, one belonging to an important delegation at that, on their station. The science conference thing was apparently really mad. 

Mensah also had messaged Pin-Lee now that we weren’t worried about messages being intercepted in and off KitJuleEpi, and then Pin-Lee messaged Station Security. So then I ended up with a bribe (they called it a settlement but it was a bribe) of a bunch of hard currency in exchange for me not pressing charges. 

“Just because they arrested me?” I asked suspiciously.   

“Wrongfully,” Mensah said. “They should not have done that to you, and they know it.” 

Or at least they did now. Pin-Lee's angry legal documents were legendary, and I had rolled back my drone footage and Mensah had yelled at everybody, a lot, while I was busy restarting. 

“Well,” I said, thrown-off, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this much money?” 

She seemed amused by this. She and I had been going to a lot of meetings (I guess because of the kidnap/attempted murder thing) and she always seemed glad to come back to the hotel. “Whatever you normally do, I suppose.” 

I didn’t want to admit that I still hadn’t figured out what to do with the hard currency I got working for Preservation or PSUMNT. I don’t pay for my media and I don’t eat or do intoxicants or buy things to make myself look pretty, and those things are pretty much all humans spend money on. 

I grumbled instead of answering, which made her smile. 

“I am going to be very excited to get off this station,” I told her. 

“You know what, me too.” 

ART was appalled. “ What did you do to yourself?” it asked, prodding the patches of medical/construct rubber on my human parts with its appendages. “What is this?”

“It worked just fine to repair my systems,” I said. “The system who gave it to me said it would work the same.” 

“You worked with another system?” ART was trying to sound disdainful, but mostly it sounded extremely jealous. 

“It was very nice to me, too.” 

ART made a feed noise like a harrumph. “It put patches on you. Like a tire.”

“I think I look cool,” I said, even though I didn’t really. It was carefully peeling off the rubber skin so I could start regrowing the actual skin and it didn’t feel terrible, but it didn’t feel good either. 

“You would,” ART said. 

The door opened and Mensah came through, with Amena on her heels and then Tano and Farai behind her, with small Afia. Khelida came skipping in last, holding Seccy the stupid stuffed cat. 

Mensah’s family was onboard now too.

ART had come to pick me up about two days after everything went down on KitJuleEpi. Farai had called Thiago, who had called ART. It had come as soon as it knew something was wrong. 

I was glad to see it, but it was also so, so deeply annoying. 

I had refused further medical attention on the station itself because I wasn't going to get any worse while waiting for ART, and I really didn't want their MedSys, or, worse, the human technicians, working on me. 

“Eww, gross,” Khelida said cheerfully, going on her tip-toes to look at the healing skin of my back and knee. 

Farai looked horrified and drew her backwards. “Maybe give it some privacy…” 

Khelida ignored her parents, which was starting to seem normal to me. She informed me, “That’s gross. I told you you were injured.” 

“Shut up,” I said, and she grinned. She was missing a tooth, which I noticed with some alarm. That definitely had not happened while she was with me. I sent an urgent medical query to ART and it did the feed equivalent of thumping me on the back of the head. Then it sent a packet on human child development, which apparently involves spontaneously losing mouth bones. If I knew that before, I definitely deleted it. 

Mensah’s family had gone to a nearby non-corporate political entity for refuge while they waited for things to shake out here on the station. Apparently they had also been rallying some very pissed-off political allies who also didn’t approve of someone openly using a child to try to get financial gain. Basically everyone was mad at Cordillera now. 

That was why response had been so prompt when we finally took them down (Security had collected all the little human/augmented human presents I left tied up for them in alleys). 

Mensah herself seemed amused. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said. 

“You are not interrupting,” ART said, butting into the conversation as usual. “I am capable of focusing on many different tasks at the same time. For example, at the moment I am removing miniscule projectile weapon fragments from areas where another system completely missed them.” 

I said, “It left them in because they don’t impact my function at all.” 

“It left them in because it doesn’t understand basic surgery, much less construct biology, of which I have definitely become the leading expert due to sheer necessity—” 

“No one cares, ART,” I said. 

“Don’t be mean,” Amena said. 

Mensah cleared her throat around a laugh. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said again. “But I wanted to let you know that all the Cordillera agents have finished processing, and they’re going to be charged. The company itself has disavowed them, of course. So they’re going to be able to go through with sentencing.”

That had been another thing me and Mensah were counting on when we decided to take out the Cordillera kidnappers. If they had the full weight of their corporation behind them, they probably never would have been arrested in the first place. KitJuleEpi was scared enough of the corporations that they would have caved to pressure. 

But the whole situation was a PR nightmare, and so Cordillera claimed that they had no idea these people were doing this, no really, and if you needed any help taking them down, let us know. With all the agents taken down in one swoop, there was no one left to try for the research, so hopefully Mensah’s family would be safe (from this, at least). 

Mensah sent me the files as she spoke, but I only gave them a cursory skim. 

“Apparently they've done several extortion schemes like this before. They almost all turned violent. They’ve done this before, leverage family members. Usually to great effect. And they badly beat a worker while stealing some experimental terraforming plant growth, destroyed a components factory, intimidated several witnesses, all sorts of things. Bad things,” said Tano. “If you hadn't been there…”

Farai gave a warning look towards Khelida, even though she was not paying attention and was showing her stupid toy the metallic fragments extracted from my various parts. 

Uncomfortably, I said, “But I was.” 

“We’re all very grateful, SecUnit,” Tano said, face twisting with emotion that I didn’t want to analyze too deeply. “Thank you.” 

I made an expression and turned slightly to face the wall.

“I made you something!” Khelida said, paying attention again. She took something out of her pocket and unfolded it. It was the pulped plant matter they used on Preservation for creative works. She had drawn a bunch of horribly proportioned ugly figures on it in bright colors. 

ART immediately sent me a packet about the importance of maintaining self-esteem in juveniles, but even I wasn’t that much of a dick. 

“Wow,” I said. “This is, um, competent.” There was a figure clearly supposed to be me with metal parts and gun arms, carrying a child clearly supposed to be her. Drawing-Khelida was holding a cat almost as ugly as the actual toy. It said HERO in big letters. 

Khelida beamed. “Are you going to put it up in your room?” 

Everyone gave me a warning look. 

“… yes…” I said. 

“Yay!”

I might lie all the time, but I don’t like breaking promises. It seems important now that I actually have the choice in what I do. 

So now in my room on ART there is exactly one decoration (I also have a lot of places to sit in there). I keep it on the wall in a frame so that I can’t accidentally smudge it/get blood/fluids on it in the inevitable event something happens. 

It is the ugliest drawing ever and is honestly a blight on the whole ambiance of the room. It draws my eye every time I come in so I usually take a couple seconds to look at it. 

This is what happens when you save humans. No good deed goes unpunished.