“From me,” another android said then, stepping forward. Park squinted, feeling like an old, infirm woman: this android was over six feet tall, athletic in build, with brown hair shorn in a military cut. Dylanex, she thought—one of the security androids tasked with assisting Boone and Hunter when they needed an extra hand. But she rarely saw him; he was so bogged down with strictures and instructions not to harm that he was usually inactive.

“We’ve exchanged data,” Dylanex continued, holding out his hands to help Park clamber to her feet. His grip was frightfully strong; she felt that he could pick her up and lob her like a frisbee. “We can assimilate each other’s protocols, diversify our abilities. It makes us more well-rounded. More useful.”

She’d never heard of such a thing before. Robots exchanging protocols—learning from each other? No. Sexbots only knew how to pleasure, security bots only knew how to guard. That was how it had always been. They couldn’t do both—could they? “Who told you to do such a thing?”

“No one,” Jimex answered blithely, from the floor. “But the ability to learn from each other was always there, right alongside the ability to communicate. And if it was there, given to us, why not use it?”

They’re malfunctioning, Park thought then. Her blood was storming, despite the nausea—or because of it. Without Reimi around for maintenance, the robots’ higher functions were degrading; they were behaving abnormally, doing and thinking things they wouldn’t typically do. Exchanging programs with each other—“assimilating,” as they called it—and now the janitor knew martial arts, the security guard knew how to clean, and the medic probably knew how to paint, or something. It was madness, behavior on the brink of short-circuiting them altogether—and also the kind of danger that paranoiacs warned about, when they pushed ideas about robot singularity.

It doesn’t matter, she told herself. She couldn’t do a thing about it now. What mattered more was Hunter. And whatever the hell she’d done to the gravity.

“You helped me?” she said to Jimex. “You knocked her out?”

Jimex nodded. “Yes. We could not allow her to harm you.” He glanced at Ellenex, whose expression tightened. “Even she agrees.”

Park felt an ache at the back of her eyes—not the headache now, but something different, like stifled tears. “Why not?”

All of the androids answered her now. “Because you are Park,” they said in unison, like a religious chant. “Home-bringer, light-giver. You are our Grace.”

Park stared. Another android—the other domestic model, Philex—stepped forward and intoned: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of Grace and truth.”

“Full of Grace and truth,” the others echoed. Jimex was smiling.