I crouched awkwardly, one palm beneath his head, the other reaching out to where the blood had soaked through his clothing and was spilling over onto the floor. I could see bone through the four deep claw-marks in his side—

Thoughts clicked off in my brain, the same way they had back on Kystrom, turning over Brigid’s body. I knew even as it happened that I would never clearly remember the sight of Indigo’s wound. Instead I pressed my free hand over his side, like Tamara had told me to, and stayed.

Some time later, I realized the noise of fighting and the hiss of gas both had stopped. Awkwardly, without losing my grip either on Indigo’s head or his side, I craned my neck around to see what Tamara was doing. The floor was covered with manikins lying unconscious, and she stood in the midst of them with her club. “Should I—”

“Stay with him,” Tamara said, in the same hard calm voice, and lifted her club.

The ground was splotched with thick black blood by the time she finished, and I crouched just outside the reach of those puddles and counted the space between Indigo’s breaths.

Tamara said, “Is he breathing?”

“Yes.” My voice came out unsteady.

“Pick him up.”

I picked him up. I tried to nudge his head up onto my shoulder but I couldn’t get it to stay; his head lolled back, eyes shut. I couldn’t keep pressure on his side while I was holding him but I tried, shrugging his torso up higher so I could curl my hand around his ribs. Tamara led us down the hallway through a series of turns my brain couldn’t commit to memory, checking doors as she went. None of the rooms we passed seemed to satisfy her. Our journey took us through another server room. I tensed as we passed through, looking around for signs of Dreamer-bots. What we’d done in the past hour or two, crushing Dreamer-bots and cutting holes in the ship—I couldn’t imagine the AI was happy about it.

At the far end of the server room there was another door. It led to a smaller room that had two exits, and was totally empty. Tamara gestured for me to put Indigo down.

The floor in this room was a little cleaner. I lowered Indigo carefully.

Tamara locked the door behind us. I noted, with a type of awareness that was becoming habitual, that the door could be locked on both sides—within the little room Tamara had picked as a temporary safe haven, and from the adjoining server room as well.

She said, “Is he alive?”

Indigo’s blood wasn’t red anymore. It had gone a deep dark blue, almost a match to his collar-light. He had run out of blood in his iron-based circulatory system, I realized. His body had switched to copper. “He’s still bleeding,” I said.

Tamara knelt beside us. Her hands were steady, quick and decisive. She reached into the pocket attached to his belt and pulled out Indigo’s medical device.