Robb hurried toward his mother’s chambers, feigning an upset stomach to not alarm the Messiers standing guard. Then again, he could probably punch one and they wouldn’t move. He hadn’t seen a single one so much as twitch.
Where is the HIVE? he wondered absently. Does it have a central stationary base? What does it look l—
A Royal Guard rounded the corner, and they slammed into each other. Robb stumbled back.
“Watch where you’re—”
The guard looked at him for a moment, dumbfounded.
Robb’s eyebrows furrowed. “Wait, don’t I know—”
Suddenly, the guard shoved him against the wall, pressing a forearm against his neck. Robb squeaked in protest. This was not how he’d imagined tonight going at all.
“You brought her here, you put her in danger—after all she did for you on the Dossier,” the guard hissed, dark eyes flickering white.
Realization hit Robb like a punch in the stomach. Goddess’s spark. “D09,” he wheezed, tugging at the humanoid Metal’s arm to try and get in a breath. “You’re mad—”
“Mad? Robb, I am furious.”
“Let me”—gasp—“explain!”
“With that silver tongue of yours?”
The Metal was literally squeezing the breath out of him. Robb tapped on his arm to try and get him to let go. His ears rang with the dizzying pressure building in his skull. “I brought you . . . back!”
D09’s face pinched, and he let go.
Robb dropped to his knees, coughing. “Goddess you’re strong.”
“You? You put me in this body?” the not-Metal asked. Viewing it on a gurney was one thing, but to actually see the body moving was another. He looked—weirdly, strangely—human. And stood taller than Robb, too.
He rubbed his neck. “I didn’t think it worked. . . . Kind of wished it didn’t now—”
“Why did you do this to me?”
Robb squinted up at the human Metal . . . person. “I thought you’d be thankful? Say, ‘Hey, Robb, thanks for saving my life! I appreciate it.’”
“Thankful?” the Metal scoffed. “I am a great many things at the moment—”
“I realized.”
“—but thankful is not one of them.”
Robb turned his eyes to the ceiling and took a deep, deep breath. “So you’d rather be dead?”
“Metals do not die.”
“Well, the way everyone mourned you, you’d think differently.”
The Metal opened his mouth to respond but then closed it again, frustrated. He took off his uniform cap and ran a hand through his hair, as if he was nervous.
Robb frowned, sort of hating that D09 had better hair than him. And where had he gotten a Royal Guard uniform, anyway?
“Robb,” D09 finally said, choosing his words carefully, “humor me for a minute, will you? You uploaded me into a new body without my knowledge. I had no instructions, no tutorials, nothing. I have had to learn it all. Can you imagine that?”
Robb blinked. “Every day.”
D09 gave him a withering look. “You mock me.”
“As much as I can,” he agreed, absently stretching up his hand, and the Metal pulled him to his feet. “I didn’t have much time to think before I uploaded you, okay? I knew my mother was coming, and I didn’t see any other choice. I thought—I don’t know what I thought. I just did it. I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot recently.”
“That is usually what happens when you mess up,” replied the redhead. “Now excuse me—”
Robb caught him by the forearm. “Wait. When my father left the palace, he took the Tsarina for a reason. He helped you save Ana, right? Do you know who set the fire? What set the fire?”
“I cannot remember.”
“Think, D09—”
“Di,” he absently corrected, shrugging off Robb’s hand, “and I cannot remember.”
“Try a little harder!”
A muscle in the Metal’s jaw fluttered. Oh, good Goddess, this was too human for him. “I said I cannot—”
A floating metal box screeched around a corner, pursued by a Messier.
Robb’s jaw went slack. “Is that . . . ?”
“Yes,” Di deadpanned.
E0S beeped and slammed into Di’s chest, cowering into his arms. Di wrapped his arms around the bot protectively, as if it was his pet.
The Messier came to a stop in front of them. It lowered its blazing blue gaze to the bot. “Thank you. Will you please hand over—”
Di punched his free hand into the Messier’s chest, twisted, and pulled back. Its memory core came out with a sigh of wires and optics. He crushed it in his grip, and the Messier’s eyes dulled. It slumped to the floor.
“Goddess.” Robb gave the Metal an incredulous look. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
Di shook his free hand as if the impact had actually hurt. “It was chasing my can opener.”
The small bot bleeped in agreement and flew out of Di’s arm, swirling around him.
Di cocked his head. “Other Messiers are coming. Ten, perhaps twelve.” He narrowed a glare at the bot. “You got into trouble. I told you to find the exit code for the moonbay, not trouble.”
It bleeped sadly in reply.
Robb hoped he had heard right. “Moonbay codes? So you have a way out?”
“Of course. Riggs parked a skysailer at the docks. Why?”
“Because Jax is here in the palace, and I need to get him out before my mother does something terrible. I didn’t have a way to do that until you. You’re here for Ana, right?”
Di looked annoyed. “No, I am here to tour the palace.”
“Sarcasm, not the time.”
“Sorry, the literary device is still new to me. I need to get Ana out of here—tonight. The malware is here. I can hear it—I just saw it.”
“You what?”
“It was terrifying,” he said, and turned his attention down the long hallway. Robb could hear the Messiers coming now, their boots clomping on the marble floor in striking precision. He stepped over the smashed Messier and followed Di down the hallway. The bot swirled around them, as if it was happy.
Di glanced over to him. “I will meet you at the docks in three hours and twenty-seven minutes, unless something goes wrong.”
“Why three hours and twenty-seven minutes?”
“Because that is when the moonbay resets its docking permissions,” he replied as they came to an intersecting hallway. They stopped. Di was to go one way to Ana’s room, and he the other.
“How do you know that?” Robb asked.
“The bot told me.”
“. . . Right. Three hours and twenty-seven minutes, and if you’re not there?”
“Leave without me.”
He didn’t like the idea, but he nodded anyway. Di could find his own way out—he’d found his own way in, after all.
Robb started for his mother’s room—where he hoped Jax was being kept—when he heard his name called. He looked over his shoulder.
The redhead smiled, and it was such a human moment, Robb faltered. “Thank you, Robb.”
“For what?”
“Saving me.”
Then Ana’s Metal turned the corner and was gone.