He felt the rip in his suit as he grazed a jagged piece of scrap metal, felt it tug on the central air reservoir inside the unit, and then felt like the Viking had just elbow-dropped him. All of the air exploded out of his suit at once, warning lights flashing on the heads-up display of his helmet to tell him that the integrity of his suit had been compromised and that he was quickly running out of air reserves.

But Rogers didn’t really think about any of that, as he was too busy being flung halfway down the corridor by rapidly exiting air deposits.

When he finally came to a stop, feeling like O-71 inside a bingo machine, he couldn’t bring himself to move. Every part of him hurt in strange and new ways. Flashbacks of the incident with the droids popped into his head; he instinctively curled into a ball and whimpered, expecting to be stepped on by one of their giant metal legs any second. Thankfully, nothing more serious happened than the last bits of air leaving the tears in his suit and making a flatulent noise.

“Uhh . . .” Rogers said analytically.

Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet and looked back toward the refuse heap he’d been examining when someone had obviously assaulted him. He could see nothing other than a pile of metal, glinting softly in the red glow of the overhead lights. But something had grabbed him.

Rogers snuck down the hallway, bracing himself after every step for a team of garbage ninjas to rush out of the shadows and deal him the final blow. The corridor was quiet. No ninjas. Stillness.

“CALL FUNCTION [ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!]”

Rogers squealed and dove to the side of the corridor, expecting the mangled remnants of the AIGCS droids to come to life and begin their zombie/droid assault. But no matter how tightly he gripped his head between his knees and muttered nonsensical gibberish, the Attack! Attack! Attack! never came.

“Ha,” a voice said, “you humans fall for that every time.”

Peeking up from his armadillo defense, Rogers found himself nearly nose to nose with the disembodied head of a droid. At least, it seemed that way at first. It was actually the disembodied torso—could you really be disembodied if the body was included?—with the head and one arm attached. It might have been a droid that hadn’t been disassembled properly before it was dumped down here. It looked older, worn around the edges. A little bit of rust here and there, perhaps, though it was difficult for Rogers to tell in the light.

“Who are you?” Rogers asked, then frowned. “You look too old to be a Froid.”

The droid’s head twitched to one side, then made an ambiguous computation noise.

“What’s a Froid?”

“Those new droids that have the Freudian Chip installed in them. But they’re new.” Rogers pointed at him. “You’re old, but you talk like the new ones.”

“Oh, I have one of those. I’m not old,” the droid said. “I’m corroded. There’s a difference.”