She wanted to scream. Then sharply suppressed the urge, aware of how they were crowded around her, staring expectantly. She took a breath and turned back to Hunter’s body; opened the woman’s eyelid and watched the gray iris drift away as if in seawater.

“Can any of you tell me what happened just now?” she asked, keeping her voice steady. She would not acknowledge their religious . . . whatever it was, at least not now; it was like the cursing, they were just parroting something else they’d heard, or otherwise greatly misinterpreting it. “What did Hunter do to the gravity, the controls? Was anything else on the ship affected?”

There was a little silence: Park imagined currents of meaning flying between all of the androids in urgent, invisible streams. Then Dianex, the engineer android, dark-ringleted and vigorous-looking, said: “Officer Hanover didn’t do anything to the controls. We didn’t let her use them.”

Park’s eyebrows rose. “So the gravity is malfunctioning on its own?”

Another silence. Then Jimex said, “According to our diagnostics, there was no malfunction in METIS’s gravity engines. There is not one now.”

“So what the hell happened, then? My feet left the ground.”

Jimex’s face was studiously blank. “There was an anomaly.”

Park kneaded her temples. “What kind of anomaly?”

“That is . . .” He paused for a moment, exchanging looks with Dylanex and Ellenex. “. . . Undetermined. For now.”

Oh, hell, Park thought. She felt the absurd instinct to chew her nails. Her heart was finally slowing, the heat of the ordeal fading from her neck and cheekbones. She had to check herself over again for broken bones. The robots couldn’t be lying to her, but they had to be wrong: either Hunter had done something to the controls, or part of the ship was malfunctioning, finally going to pieces without Reimi. Just as the robots themselves were. How long did she have before everything broke down entirely?

What if it’s already too late? she thought, folding her arms over her stomach. What if we’ve reached the point of no return—the extinction event?

And before she knew it—because she was afraid, and because she didn’t know if she could trust the androids anymore—she found herself activating her inlays and calling up—

“Fulbreech,” she hissed. She hoped that her voice was enough to startle him awake. “I need your help. Now.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end. She was about to say something else when he suddenly said, his voice startlingly clear in her ear: “Park?”

“I’m in the bridge,” she told him, speaking rapidly. “The androids woke me up—Hunter’s here. She was—sleepwalking, I think, like Holt was. Or something. And the gravity glitched—she attacked me—now she’s passed out. I need to get her out of here; can you help me?”