“The very core that is yourself. Your mind. They mean to remove all but the autonomous systems needed to run your body. Then they’ll install a chip reader in your body—note that I don’t say ‘you,’ because that you per se won’t exist at that point anymore. And then they will set the body up in a rental establishment—probably a major city, where there’s the sort of people that can afford to rent a high-end fancy body for this purpose or that. It won’t matter much to you.”

Atlanta stared at her. “That’s horrible!”

“That, Princess,” Niko said ironically, “is what I was trying to spare you. When you are taken to speak with him, I advise you to be small and meek and unremarkable and if you get the chance, mention how valuable you are, intact and uncored.” She looked around the room. “Anyone got any ideas?”

“I presume we’ll be brought in front of Tubal Last,” Dabry said.

“Eventually, I’m sure,” Niko said. “He’ll want to make us wait to acknowledge the fact that he’s a busy man, and an important one, and that we are much much less important than he is.”

She grimaced sourly, then shook her head. “Prep yourselves, everyone. To hurry up and wait.”

Despite her prediction, it was scarcely half an hour before the door swung open. The tiger man stood there, flanked this time by several drones. “Up,” he snapped.

He forced them to follow the lead drone, single file, with Niko and Dabry at the very end of the line. He marched them through corridors that smelled of sweat and lime and dirt.

Atlanta glanced into corridors as they passed, trying to catch a glimpse of something, anything, of their surroundings that might be useful. But to no avail. Their footsteps rang on the metal flooring, so she thought they might be aboard a spaceship rather than some more permanent structure. There was no way of telling, really, where in the immense hive of structures they were.

The interior styles changed as they marched along, giving the impression that they were passing between ships. The jaunty but faded red and blue of a famous cruise line’s former flagship gleamed in one stretch, lined with hulks of ancient food machines, long denuded now, although here and there in the thickets of empty mechanisms a packet of nutriflake or a sweet bar had gotten jammed and refused to descend to the waiting access drawer. Bot lice had eaten away most of the accessible plastic, and where they hadn’t, the blank white credit panels were dingy with age.

From there they ascended in a lift, crammed together and listening to one another breathe—as they ascended two, three, four levels marked with symbols that Atlanta didn’t recognize.