10. In our long history, we have exploited many intelligent beings. That a horse or cow or sheep cannot give legal consent should not give us the right to exploit it. In spite of our advances in bioethics and our care in watching the rise of artificial intelligence, we have overlooked this for so long that we have forgotten it.

—The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

Welga’s back and eyes ached. Twenty-four hours of poring over intelligence reports while new data continued to flood in faster than she could parse it—too many loose ends. Too many other dead ends. Briefings had grown more tense as the Machinehood operatives went quiet again. Probably nursing their wounds, like her and Connor. She stood, stretched, and regretted it when her knitting skin and bones screamed in protest. She stuck her hand in her pocket and remembered the fragment. No DNA matches, but if the blood belonged to someone in the Maghreb, would they have it in any database?

She left Olafson blanked on flow and rode up the elevator to see Anne Crawford, who worked in the forensics section.

The analyst wheeled out of her alcove and held out a hand to Welga. “Good to have you back, Ramírez, though I’ve seen you in better shape.”

Welga laughed. “Good to be back. Sorry about the awkward handshake. Fractures in both arms.”

“Ouch. I’d have chosen better circumstances, but I suspect you wouldn’t be here if that were the case. What can I do for you?”

“I saw in the report that you did the genetic analysis on my sample.”

“Yes. That was a good catch on your part. Stealthy, too.”

“Thanks. I wish it hadn’t been such a dead end. Do you still have it?”

“Sure. I was just examining it under higher magnification. Turned up something interesting, though not terribly useful.”

Crawford led Welga to a bench where the metal fragment sat, inert and unpowered, under a microscope. The display showed a sequence of letters and numbers at magnification. Damage had warped the final five characters. Ridiculously, Welga felt a little sorry for the blox. I’d like to find your home as much you do, she thought.

“See this prefix?” Crawford said. “It indicates off-world manufacture.”

“It came from a space station?”

Crawford nodded. “They’re working with materials developed for microgravity. We have people looking into the origin of this piece. Unfortunately, the laws only require a prefix to indicate off-world sourcing. The rest could be a serial number or sales code or something else. The al-Muwahhidun must have bought the stuff from the black market.”

“If the blood on this came from someone in the empire, could we tell?” Welga asked.