“Captain Sagara is in the bridge,” Jimex said. He gave Park a firm push. “Please run.”

She hesitated for just the barest second—a precious second, considering the circumstances. She did not want them to come to harm. But there were a dozen of them, and only one of Natalya—and one android alone was ten times stronger than a human.

“Be careful,” she said to them. “I’ll—I’ll come back for you.”

Unfathomably, Jimex smiled. “We know,” he said. “You are one of us now.”

She left them and ran. Down the empty corridors, up the narrow chutes, screaming for help at the top of her lungs all along the way. No one answered her—there were only, what, five others left on the three-deck ship?—but somehow it felt as if the Deucalion itself was helping her, guiding her along by some magnetic force, directing her down hallways she felt would close up behind her like a mouth to seal Natalya off. Irrational, of course, and absurd—but she knew she would get to the bridge before the surveyor.

Then she heard a sound like a gunshot, going off behind her.

Park stopped dead in her tracks, against every self-preservation instinct she had. Then she listened closely. Where the hell had Natalya gotten a gun? And why hadn’t she used it on Park?

And which of the androids had she shot?

God, please, she thought, thinking of Dianex’s long black hair; Megex’s gentle smile, even Philex’s twitchy, nervous look. Jimex. Please, none of them.

After the shot there was no sound—nothing but the sounds of the ship, coughing and stirring to life. Park felt her inlays flickering back on. Had Sagara finally gotten the ship running at full capacity again? Does that mean he wants to take off?

No, Sagara was adamant about completing the mission at all costs—and somehow, deep in the foundation of her bones, down in her mandible and in her hips, Park felt that they would not leave Eos. Not like this.

Fear eventually pressed her onward. Either Jimex and the others were fine, or they weren’t. There was nothing she could do about it now. Chances were they had swarmed Natalya, and she had simply fired into the air to frighten them away.

But androids didn’t know that kind of fear, she remembered then. They didn’t have that instinct to self-preserve. If Natalya put a bullet in one of their heads, the others wouldn’t react. Like how Jimex hadn’t flinched when Boone pointed a gun at his face.

She began to cry, weakly, even as she panted for breath. Finally she made it to the doors that sealed the bridge and palmed them open; she staggered through the threshold with blood and tears commingling on her face.

Sagara stared at her. He was flipping through some sort of digital manual as it hovered in the air before him like a sheet of pale flame. At the sight of her he automatically put a hand to his weapon.