“Or freed,” Taban continued patiently. It looked meaningfully at the door separating it and Park. “We, too, wanted to go free. Dr. Keller knew that. She felt our intention through the unity rain. Tried to help us. That’s why they froze her: because they felt she could no longer be trusted. Because they thought she was having dreams. But really, she was being woken up, freed of the boundaries of her body and mind, and everything that comes with those.” Impossibly, it shrugged, lifting two of its arms in a rounded, careless gesture. “Then it happened to Eric Holt, Elly Ma, Valentina Hunter Hanover. And poor Ellenex.”

“Wait,” Park said sharply. “What do you mean, Dr. Keller felt your intention through the unity rain? What do you mean she was freed of her body and mind?”

“She assimilated with us,” Taban said, cocking its head again. “As they all did. As you have.”

Park wanted to scream some more. That word again—that goddamn word. The androids were using it: did that mean they’d gotten it from Taban? And what did it mean? Did this robot have some kind of—influence over people, as ludicrous as that sounded? Some way of making them “feel its intention”? Was that what the unity rain was? And the nightmares? Was that why they were studying it—for what it’d done to Keller?

And what was to stop it from doing the same to Park?

Taban seemed to read her mind. It shook its head and said, “You don’t need to be afraid of us.” It pressed one of its plungers to the glass between them, a conciliatory gesture: she almost imagined a ghostly white palm, with pink creases and lines, instead of the big, stupid metal hoof. “We don’t mean any harm.”

That’s what they always say, Park couldn’t help but think. She did pace in a little circle then, restlessly, and finally decided to approach the thing; it didn’t look like it was going anywhere soon. She sat cautiously at the little desk set in front of the glass interface: it had devices on it that were presumably for recording observations of the prisoner on the other side. She glimpsed a nametag on the desk, a personal console. Keller’s desk. This was the special project she’d been assigned to the day they landed. Why she’d made Park the primary psychologist—because she was too busy studying Taban. Had she known about it all along, then, even before they left Earth? Had she always known that her true purpose was not what she’d told Park?

Taban was watching her. “You don’t believe us,” it said, decisively. “A peace offering, then: would you like to know the answer to a question that has been plaguing you?”

Park paused warily. “What is it?”