When I’d called it a pet robot, I honestly thought I was exaggerating. This was going to be even more annoying than I had anticipated, and I had anticipated a pretty high level of annoyance, maybe as high as 85 percent. Now I was looking at 90 percent, possibly 95 percent.

I managed to keep my reaction out of the feed. It wasn’t easy. I said, This has to be a secret, to keep Don Abene and the others safe. We can’t risk anyone finding out about it.

Okay, it said. I wasn’t sure if it was serious. It couldn’t be this easy. Maybe it was just going along until it had a chance to report me? But it said, Promise me Don Abene and all my friends will be safe.

I had the horrible feeling it was serious. I hadn’t expected a bot on ART’s level, but holy shit. Had the humans actually coded it to be childlike, or petlike, I guess? Or had its code developed that way on its own, responding to the way they treated it?

I hesitated, because while I would rather not see a group of humans killed (again), I wasn’t their SecUnit, or even their pretend augmented human security consultant. It’s hard to keep humans safe when you can’t let them see you. But it was waiting, and I wanted it to trust me, and I said, I promise.

Okay. What’s your name?

This caught me off guard. Bots don’t have names, SecUnits don’t have names. (I’d given myself a name, but it was private.) I used the name I’d given Ayres and the others, my poor dumb humans who had sold themselves to a company and by now probably understood just how bad a deal it was. Rin. Security Consultant Rin.

That’s not your real name. I could tell through the feed it was genuinely confused. It doesn’t sound like you.

Obviously Miki was getting more through the feed than I had assumed. That was all I needed. I had nothing prepared for this, and there sure as hell wasn’t anything in my buffer that was remotely helpful. I defaulted to honesty (I know, I was surprised, too) and said, Rin is what I want to be called. I don’t tell anyone my real name.

Okay. I understand, Rin. I won’t tell anyone that you’re here. I will be your friend and help Don Abene and our team.

Right. (I almost said, Okay.) I couldn’t tell if that was a default answer or Miki was making me a solemn promise. Whatever, either it told the humans about me or it didn’t, and if I was going to do this I had to assume it wouldn’t. Can you give me system access to your shuttle? I want to make sure it’s safe.

Okay. And the data came through the feed.