I sighed again. I was having a lot of opportunities to do it and I think I was getting good at it.

Well, this was just great.

The module clicked into place and I had a moment of purely irrational fear. ART must have picked up on it because it said, Please, my MedSystem makes no mistakes.

Amena is on the survey because her education requires an internship in almost getting killed, I guess.

Thiago took a sharp breath. Ratthi’s expression went extremely skeptical. Amena made a derisive noise. Overse said, “Fuck no.”

I sent, You have no idea what I am.
She tilted her head and looked more mad. I know exactly what you are. You’re afraid, you’re hurt, and you need to calm the fuck down so we can get through this situation alive.

(If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.) (Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)

I felt a little guilty, sort of, almost. Something was wrong, and I hoped it wasn’t about me.

He didn’t like me, I didn’t like him, and that was fine. It was absolutely fine.

ART said, Everything that occurred before my crew was captured is irrelevant. It is none of your business.
I said, “You made it my business when you kidnapped me.”

She missed Mensah mouthing the words stop it at me. (I guess the feed isn’t adequate for all forms of communication, particularly those that involve a lot of glaring.)

I wasn’t annoyed at all. Not one bit.

(I mean, I’ll be paranoid after that, too, but only about the usual things.)

I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild rogue rampage of hitching rides on bot-piloted transports and watching my serials.

I felt a little guilty, sort of, almost. Something was wrong, and I hoped it wasn’t about me.

The transport said immediately, That was unnecessarily childish.

Possibly I should just stop complaining like a human and get on with it.

His face did the thing humans do when they’re trying not to show how annoyed they are. (Mission accomplished.)

Seriously, I don’t know why I didn’t just say you’re welcome and please get out of my cubicle so I can sit here and leak in peace.

It was clear that even after seeing my face on Volescu’s camera video, they didn’t recognize me without the helmet. So then I had to look at them and say, “I’m your SecUnit.”

I had an option, but it was a terrible idea.

(This was not the first time I’d been shot in the head by a human I was trying to protect, let’s put it that way.)

Whatever—the big danger to humans is not raiders, angry human-eating fauna, or rogue SecUnits; it’s other humans.

Preservation’s ships are different, so stepping onto a Corporation Rim transport was familiar in a weird way. (A weirdly unpleasant way that disrupted the organic parts of my insides.)

The weapons scanner (which I was not allowed to hack, and which I wasn’t hacking) alerted on me, but it had my body scan ID on the weapons-allowed list so it didn’t set off an alarm.

But Dr. Mensah had told the Preservation Council the truth (no, I don’t know why, either) and then she had to brief Station Security.

I recalled my drones and they shot down toward us to stream in through the hatch. I walked in after them and let the hatch close behind me as the launch protocols started.

They really didn’t want me here and whatever Mensah said, they weren’t going to suddenly change their minds.

One of ART’s long-sleeved crew T-shirts had fallen out of the recycler at one point. My first impulse was to throw it away, but I needed it, so I pulled it on over my head

Why the hell does everything have to happen at once?