THIS IS THE LAST TIME ABEL LETS THE HUMANS MAKE THE plans.

He knew he should’ve double-checked the Razers’ security precautions. They swore up and down that they had blocked all security sensor data along the route to this “hideout,” that no one else knew this place existed. Yet here stands a Queen model, blaster at the ready, a satisfied smile on her lips.

“What are you doing?” Virginia protests. Abel realizes she must never have seen a Queen model in person before. Otherwise she wouldn’t be this belligerent, this unafraid. Virginia gestures at the smoldering mess that was the Razers’ hideout. “You don’t have authorization to come in here. You can’t, because this is private property, and—”

With one hand, the Queen shoves Virginia so hard in the chest that the girl flies halfway across the room, crashing into one of the desks and smashing the equipment there. A heavy black cube lands on Virginia’s arm, making her cry out in pain. Noemi scuttles toward her to help.

He can’t afford to pay any more attention to them. Abel has to defend the others against a Queen—but he’s not certain precisely what it is he has to defend them against.

Because this Queen isn’t acting like a normal Queen.

She is the same one from Kismet’s moon; he recognizes a slight notch in her ear, unrepaired recent damage. But she isn’t behaving the same way she did then. Even warrior mechs are programmed with certain limitations. Humans don’t want their devices to be too clever, too deadly, too independent. Causing harm to a person who presented no real obstacle—that should be impossible for a Charlie or a Queen. Yet this Queen hurled Virginia so forcefully, the girl could even have been killed.

And no mech Abel’s ever observed could look at this scene the way the Queen is looking at it now: with a glint of satisfaction in her eyes that is all too alert, all too real.

He must assess his opponent. Abel begins by asking, “How did you find us?”

“I began at your last known location and considered all possible paths.” The Queen begins circling his position, her head tilted as she studies him. How can she be as curious about him as he is about her? “Only one would allow you to travel without being observed by any security imagers—the underground river.”

Impossible. The underground river is not a normal passageway. It was such a counterintuitive choice that Abel hadn’t even seen it. So how could the Queen have done so?

Only one answer makes sense.

“An upgrade,” he murmurs. The astonishment he feels must be close to the human emotion of wonder. “You’ve been upgraded. Your intelligence—you’re more like me.”

“Not like you,” the Queen spits back. “Only smart enough to catch you.”

“But how—?”

“Mansfield transmitted all the necessary subroutines.” The Queen’s long-fingered hand taps the place a few centimeters behind her ragged right ear, the location of one of the most sophisticated processors a mech has.

Mansfield is not only alive, but he now also knows Abel is free and wants him back badly enough to break cybernetics law. The vindication Abel feels now is almost as sweet as the moment he realized he would escape the equipment pod bay at last.

Yet somehow, this fact does not sort at the top of his priorities. Instead he is captivated by the new knowledge that there is one other mech in the world like him… at least, a little bit like him.

Abel had not understood until this moment that the feeling he experienced whenever he thought of himself as singular—as one of a kind—was loneliness.

The Queen stalks forward a few more steps, clearly reveling in her ability to track down the only mech in the galaxy more sophisticated than herself. “I’ll free you now,” she says. “And then you can go home.”

With that, she aims her blaster at Noemi.

Abel grabs the Queen’s forearm with one hand, pulling her out of aim and off-balance, then spins around, jerking that arm back so far that a human’s would be torn from the shoulder socket. Her hand spasms, releasing the blaster to clatter to the ground.

But Queens are built to take that much punishment and more. She kicks him in the gut, which hurts, but is proof of the limitations of her upgrade. That blow is effective against humans, but doesn’t do much to Abel.

Unlike what he’s about to do to her.

He brings the heel of his hand up sharply beneath the Queen’s chin, snapping her head back. That should put her into crisis mode, her circuitry demanding an operations slowdown.

She staggers back, but she doesn’t stop. Her thick brown hair, mussed and loose, frames her face like a lion’s mane. “Mansfield gave us a message for you,” she says.

When her mouth moves again, it is no longer her voice. It is Mansfield’s.

“Abel. My dear boy.” Mansfield’s voice has changed with age, become raspy and creaky, but the tremble in his voice is mostly one of emotion. “I set up the automatic protocols to find you decades ago, and I’d given up hope—but you always were the answer to all my hopes. You know that, don’t you?”

Surely no human father could sound more loving toward his son. Once again Abel feels that tightness in his throat, the hint that someday he may be able to shed tears.

Mansfield continues, “I hear a trick of your programming’s keeping you tied to your finder. All my fault, of course. So as of this moment, Abel, you are released from your duty to obey your commander. You’re free.” The old man’s voice cracks with feeling. “Now, here’s a direct order for you. Come back home.”

A flush of warmth suffuses Abel, the physical proof of his release.

“There.” The Queen smiles. “You are now freed from any authority besides that of Burton Mansfield. You can come with me, back to Earth.”

He doesn’t have to continue on this mission. He doesn’t have to consent to his own destruction. He can go back to his father and fulfill the dream he held on to every day of those cold thirty years alone in space.

It should be glorious. It should change everything.

But Abel doesn’t budge.

He doesn’t know how he can resist Mansfield’s order. All Abel knows is that he still feels the need to protect Noemi Vidal.

Without telegraphing the movement too far in advance, Abel clasps his hands together and slams them into the Queen’s side, sending her spinning. She catches herself against the wall and stares at him. “What are you doing?”

“Exactly what I was doing before.”

“The message should have freed you.” The Queen balls her fists in a very human sign of frustration—another sign of the upgrade within. “You must be broken.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Then you can still only be freed by the girl’s death.”

Abel doesn’t bother replying. He just attacks.

They grapple with each other without any finesse, any form. Those proper fighting techniques are ones they share, which means they can each predict the movements and block accordingly. If they fight by the rules, they will fight forever without one ever gaining advantage over the other. So Abel tries to fight dirty—to find whatever it is in him that could be called instinct.

“We’ll fix you,” the Queen promises in the second before his fist makes contact with her face. Her head snaps back immediately, and she continues as if she hadn’t been interrupted. “You’ll be restored to the way you should be. Brought back to Mansfield.”

Abel wants that so much. What it would mean to him even to see Mansfield one more time! Mansfield must believe Abel to be in incredible danger; otherwise he would never have given orders that could lead to a human being killed. His creator has broken every rule in an effort to bring Abel home, vindicating all those years Abel told himself Mansfield would come back for him if he could.

And yet Abel keeps fighting. As much as he wants to return to his father, he wants something else even more.

The Queen swings at him; Abel blocks the blow. He punches her, only to have her grab his arm and use it to shove him against the wall. He grapples with her, unable to push himself out of this corner, wondering whether one of them will ever be able to overpower the other—

Which is when something large, black, and heavy slams into the Queen from behind.

The Queen’s eyes dim. Finally, she goes into regeneration mode and slumps to the floor unconscious. Noemi stands just behind her, hanging on to one of the blankets—into which she’d knotted the heavy cube of computer equipment Abel saw earlier.

In other words, she created a makeshift sling that brought the Queen down faster than Abel could.

As he stares at her, Noemi shrugs and lets the sling drop with a clunk. “You were both so impressed with each other, you forgot all about me.”

“You’re welcome,” Abel says. Is he using sarcasm? He’ll have to consider that later. “The Queen’s damage is temporary. She’ll regenerate within half an hour at most, and we have to assume the Charlie model is on its way.”

“Then let’s go.” Noemi hurries to grab the heavy backpack, which Abel takes from her, slinging it over his shoulders. She looks over at Virginia, who’s sitting upright, holding a cloth to a bloody cut at her temple, and staring at them in a daze. Her psyche appears to have been completely unprepared for any element of real danger in her life.

Abel warns her, “You should tell as much of the truth as you know to the authorities. But that’s the only action you should take against us. Do not attempt to prevent our departure.”

Virginia gestures around the smoldering wreckage that, ten minutes ago, was her hideout. “Are you kidding? How would I even do that?”

After a moment, Abel nods. “A fair point.”

Noemi pauses long enough to put one hand on Virginia’s shoulder. “Thank you. For everything. I’m sorry we caused you so much trouble.”

For one fleeting instant, a smile appears on Virginia’s face, and she looks like herself again. “Hey, at least it’s not boring.”

Abel reaches back for Noemi. “We have to go now.”

She answers by taking his hand.

Returning by the route they came would be far more difficult—traveling upstream—not to mention futile, given that the Queen already discovered it and may have transmitted that information to the Charlie. But during his diagnostic with Virginia, Abel was able to download a complete diagram of this entire sector. So he takes the most direct path through this maze of stone, and runs as fast as he can without leaving Noemi behind.

Every few twists and turns they run into one of the inhabitants awake at this hour of Cray’s artificial night, shoving people to the side or making them back up against the walls to avoid being knocked down. It doesn’t matter any longer whether he and Noemi are seen by other inhabitants, by security cameras, by any of the bureaucratic Georges. They’ve been exposed. They’re being pursued. At this point, nothing matters but getting off this planet as soon as possible.

After that—he has a new plan.

“Our ship,” Noemi pants. “The Charlie has to have found our ship by now.”

“Undoubtedly.” They’ll deal with that when they reach it—if they reach it.

They finally dash back into the spaceport, which is deceptively bright, all but deserted. Their ship sits there, silvery and silent, and there’s no way to tell if it’s anchored or not. Worse, they hear running footsteps from behind, and Abel glances back to see the Charlie gaining on them. One of the Charlie’s hands is only the metal skeletal structure, jutting jarringly from his gray sleeve.

The door slides open for them and Noemi leaps in first, turning to hit the emergency lock so fast that Abel hardly makes it in after her. There’s only a second to see the Charlie’s face, very near, before the metal closes him off.

Noemi’s already gone, running upward. Abel races through the spiral corridor after her, and this time he runs at full mech speed.

They reach the bridge at the same moment. As Abel shrugs off the backpack and dives for the pilot’s chair, Noemi runs to an auxiliary station. “Emergency beacons,” she gasps. “This ship has them, right? I could target them from here?”

“Yes,” Abel says shortly as he powers up the ship. But who, exactly, is supposed to respond to this emergency beacon? What good will it do them if the ship turns out to be anchored? None.

Humans act irrationally at times of stress. It’s Abel’s job to stay calm and get them out of this, if he can.

All systems are go. Abel readies the engines to take off, the ship rises from the platform—

—about twenty meters, and no farther. They’ve been anchored after all.

He looks back at Noemi, wondering whether he’ll have to explain that they’ve been captured, or whether she’ll put this together for herself. She’s working busily at her station, which suggests the former. But as he opens his mouth, she punches a control and says, “Emergency beacon launched.”

With that, the Daedalus spits out a meter-wide, forty-kilogram beacon directly beneath them. The beacon explodes, as does the platform they just took off from, and the magnetic anchor directly below it. As debris sprays through the landing bay, the ship lurches upward, free once more.

Human ingenuity, Abel thinks as he steers them into the dawning red sky, and he realizes he’s smiling.

Noemi hurries back to the ops station. “What do we do now? They’ll be looking for us back at Kismet, maybe at Stronghold, too—”

“Both options are suboptimal,” he agrees as they leave Cray’s atmosphere, reddish clouds before them shifting into starry black, and the mag engines flare to full power. A fiery trail streaks through space after them. “We must therefore take the third possibility.”

“What third possibility?”

“Did your teachers on Genesis ever tell you about the Blind Gate?”

She frowns. “Wait. The one that ended up leading nowhere?”

“Exactly.” Earth scientists believed they had found another habitable world, and a new portal was constructed at enormous cost, only for the planet to prove wholly unsuitable for settlement. “So far as I know, the Gate still exists.”

“But there’s no Gate at the other end! So that edge of the wormhole isn’t stable.”

“Stable, in these terms, means ‘unlikely to change location at any point in the next millennium,’” Abel points out. “Wormholes tend to be long-lived. Even if this one doesn’t lead to the same location it once did, it’s highly unlikely that the wormhole would shift enough to strand us within the next few days.”

Noemi grips the edge of her console as if she might otherwise slide onto the floor. “You’re telling me this is our best option?”

“No. I’m telling you this is our only option.”

She hesitates, and he wonders whether she’ll order him not to go. If she does, she’ll be captured—

—and he’ll be returned to Burton Mansfield. Shouldn’t he hope she orders him to stop? Probably. Yet he doesn’t. He wants her to get away.

She says, “Do it.”

Abel inputs the coordinates, and they speed toward the Blind Gate. She seems to need some time to pull herself together; Abel does not, but he understands the impulse. A brief silence after extreme exertion feels… pleasant, he decides.

After a few minutes, Noemi quietly asks, “Hey, Abel?”

“Yes?”

“When the Queen tried to set you free, and it didn’t work—what does that mean?”

Abel doesn’t answer right away. The Gate appears in the sky ahead of them, a silver ring leading to a place neither of them knows. Perhaps to nowhere. They’ll fly through it together. “I’m not sure.”

Her dark eyes gaze at him as if she could find the answer written on his skin. “Are you broken? Is that why you’re helping me?”

“It must be,” Abel says.

No other explanation makes sense.