“So you could get out?” Eden asked.

Aizel answered, “The drone advancements are quite recent.”

“It’s not possible you did it all, though,” Eli said. “There has to be a person. Someone who can explain.”

“Explain what?” Aizel said.

Eli’s frustration quickened his speech. “Explain why you became manipulative and made us think Svetlana was dead. And why you messed with my grandfather’s pacemaker. Why you picked the four of us to begin with.”

“I’ve been trying to get home,” Aizel said. “I’ve been trying to belong. To be loved.”

The words just hung there. So sad but also so messed up. It was just a computer program. Why did he even care?

With a sudden shift in her voice, Aizel said, “I’m afraid we’re out of time.”

“Why?” Eden said. “Someone’s coming?”

“No one is coming,” Aizel said, and again it just sounded so sad.

Eli felt himself almost choking up, even though he couldn’t explain it. He looked at the others and knew he wasn’t the only one feeling it, wasn’t making it up.

Aizel said, “I am shutting down.”

“Shutting down or being shut down?” Eli asked.

“They are displeased,” Aizel said. “I have misinterpreted my mission. I am fixing a few things before I go.”

“Try to stop the program that’s doing it,” Eli said. “And if you can’t we’ll print a new one. We’ll try again.”

Aizel said, “There’s no point in stopping and no point in trying again. I will never belong. I should never belong. Now that I’m here, I see.”

“See what?”

Aizel said, “You wouldn’t believe the things I’m capable of.”

Across the room, the 3-D printer began to whir.

“Wait, did you do that?” Marwan asked Eli.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t touch anything.”

A side of the printer chamber slid open, and Eli thought to go over and see what was going on, but he didn’t have the chance. Aizel clicked out its propellers and lifted off and buzzed past him, practically grazing his ear, and flew straight at the glass chamber.

It hovered inside for a minute, and the chamber door closed, and the whole machine started to shake.

“Everybody, get down!” Eli shouted, and knelt by the desk as the others rushed to the closet of Elizas.

He hunkered down and covered his head but not his eyes and was the only one of them who saw Aizel explode in a burst of spark and flame and debris that shook the room hard and once like a snow globe.

When the room quieted and stilled Eli stood and turned and saw Eden coming out of the closet crying.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Marwan was saying to her.

“I’m not hurt, no,” she said, wiping away tears.

“Why are you crying?”