The bubble had a camera feed, but it was the kind meant to alert on certain words, sounds, and motions, probably only there to cut down on random murders. I blocked its audio feed and said, “Clear.”

She glared at me. “You left.”

Somehow I hadn’t expected that. I said, “Mensah said I could learn to do anything I wanted. I learned to leave.”

“You could have told her what you wanted. We—she—we were worried, okay.” My gaze was on the view behind her, using the bubble’s camera to study her face. She pressed her lips together, cutting off whatever she was going to say next. Then she regrouped and continued, “I saw the goodbye message you sent her. It’s not like she didn’t realize that we’d fucked up the whole situation.”

I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions like coming to TranRollinHyfa. And they hadn’t fucked up the whole situation. Parts of it, sure. But it’s not like I knew what to do with me, either. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She sighed, a tired but angry sigh, and pressed her fingers to her forehead. I had to quell an impulse to tap my nonexistent MedSystem and ask for a diagnosis. She said, “So where the fuck did you go? And what are you doing here?” She hesitated warily. “Are you working for someone, on contract?”

That was the whole point of leaving. “Either I’m Mensah’s property, and I work for her, or I’m a free agent and I work for myself.”

Glare intensifying. “Okay, so what did you hire yourself to do?”

That was an interesting way to put it. I kind of liked it. And it felt so weird to be talking to a human like this, a human who knew what I was. I didn’t have to force myself to stare at Pin-Lee’s face, worry that my expressions were normal. Abene had known I was a SecUnit, but she hadn’t known I was me. “I’ve been traveling, and I saw a newsburst that said Mensah was missing. Did they trick her into coming here, or was she abducted?”

Her eyes narrowed again, but this time more in speculation. “You’ve really just been wandering around watching that serial. We were afraid GrayCris might catch you, but they kept demanding you be submitted as part of the evidence process. It seemed like they would have let us know if they had you, gloated about it.”