Eva did as she was instructed. She winced, gritting her teeth, as she tightened the wrap around the toe cap, which now acted as a splint for her fingers.

“Splinting complete,” the Omnipod finished. “Avoid activity that may aggravate injury, and keep dressing clean and dry. Have IMA recheck injury in twenty-four-hour increments. Thank you.”

Eva slid her foot back into her sneakboot and tucked the Omnipod back into her pocket. She snuck out of her hiding place and back into the throng of museum visitors.

As she walked the floor of the Great Hall, she discovered that there was an entrance on either end. Eva trotted toward the closest, the back entrance, passing a preserved herd of grazing water bears. She was almost at the back entrance when she spotted Besteel.

While his back was to her, Eva slipped behind an enormous tank full of spiderfish and spied on him. The huntsman turned his head as he talked to another museum patron, and Eva realized that it wasn’t Besteel at all but simply another Dorcean. She let out a sigh of relief and headed off in the opposite direction—toward the front entrance—just to be safe.

She hurried as she neared the door. She felt the warmth of the late-day sun beaming in from the decorated high-arch windows over the wide half-circle doorways. She was just about through the entrance when something caught her eye.

Something in one of the exhibits.

The exhibit that attracted her attention was down a corridor to her left. Eva paused at the front door as throngs of pedestrians slipped past her. Mesmerized, she walked slowly toward the exhibit corridor. Hanging at the corridor’s entrance was a gold-speckled flying contraption, but it was the illuminated display below it, welcoming visitors into the exhibit, that caught her eye.

A dingy yellow jackvest, with long sleeves covered in worn emblems, was mounted under thick glass. Below it were a soiled, crumpled pair of wooly socks and a single sneakboot. A display full of tarnished clunky versions of the Omnipod stood nearby. All around, glass bubbles floated with captions projected onto their round surfaces. Eva could not read the symbols that they projected, but she remembered something Rovender had said about her WondLa.

I have seen similar objects in the Royal Museum in Solas.

She entered the exhibit, staring at the encrusted items arranged in the glass displays: a collection of corroded spoons, stacks of chipped bowls, sheets of nonworking electra-paper, a cracked holo-bulb, and the unmistakable head of a robot, its silicone facial skin long eroded away.

Eva slumped forward, leaning her forehead on the display’s glass.

Well, this proves it for sure, she thought. Muthr and I weren’t alone on this planet.

“But it looks like we are now,” Eva whispered, gazing at the lifeless eyes of the robot head. Its braincase was shattered, the top of it missing.