A larger drone flew in, carrying Tapan’s bag, her blood-stained jacket, and my knapsack. ART flashed me a view of the other drones still inside the shuttle. Four of the humans in the shuttle were still alive, though unconscious. ART had sent drones to scrub and sterilize away my fluids and Tapan’s blood from the shuttle’s interior. ART had already wiped the bot pilot’s memory and deleted any security data. It was also chatting casually with transit ring launch authority with a forged feed signature from one of the dead humans.

I watched as the drones finished and retreated, then ART sealed the shuttle again and launched it with a filed flight plan back to RaviHyral. The onboard bot pilot would land it, full of terribly injured humans, and no one would know they hadn’t done it to each other until they were all conscious and told their stories. Though maybe some wouldn’t want to tell the story of how they had helped kidnap another human. Whatever happened, it would give us all time to get out of here.

I asked ART, How did you know to do that? though I already knew the answer.

It knew I knew, but it said, Episode 179 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

ComfortUnit knelt beside me. “Can I help?”

“No.” The medical drones were clamped onto me now, digging for the projectiles, and I was leaking onto ART’s pristine MedSystem floor. The anesthetic was making me numb. “How did you know I was one of the Ganaka Pit units?”

It said, “I saw you get off the tube access in that section. There’s nothing else down there. It’s not in the historical database anymore, but the humans still tell each other horror stories about it. If you were really a rogue and not under orders to go there, then there was an eighty-six percent chance that you went there because you were one of the units involved.”

I believed it. “Drop your wall.”

It did, and I rode the feed into its brain. I could feel ART with me, alert for traps. But I found the governor module, rendered it null, and slid back out into my own body again.

The ComfortUnit had fallen back, sitting down on the deck with a thump, staring at me.

I said, “Go away. Don’t let me see you again. Don’t hurt anyone on this transit ring or I’ll find you.”

It shoved upright, unsteady. More of ART’s drones flicked through the air, making sure it didn’t try to damage anything, herding it toward the door. It followed the drones out into the corridor. Through ART’s feed I watched it go through to the main hatch, where the lock cycled and it went out into the transit ring.

ART watched it walk away through its lock camera. It said, I thought you might destroy it.