Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

Thiago: “You trust it that much?” Mensah: “With my life, literally. I know what it will do to protect her, and you, and the rest of the team. Of course, it has its faults. In fact, it’s probably listening to us right now. Are you listening, SecUnit?” Me, on the feed: What? No.

“What happened in Medical?” “You happened, you got shot.” Oh, right, that.

“No hugging,” I warned her. It was in our contract. “Do you need emotional support? Do you want me to call someone?”

“If I thought he was going to hurt you, I’d be disposing of his body. I don’t fuck around, either.”

her about Potential Target. After spending my entire existence having to gently suggest to humans that they not do things that would probably get them killed, it was nice to be able to tell them in so many words to not be so fucking stupid. But I didn’t regret doing it.)

I really didn’t need to be second-guessed by an adolescent human right now. “Do you have any other suggestions?”

It didn’t know who I was, what I was, it might not even know who ART was, but it knew I cared, and it was going to enjoy what it said next. “We deleted it, of course.”

The good thing about being a construct is that I can have a dramatic emotional breakdown while still running my background search to find the drone key commands.

After a subjective eternity that was actually 1.2 seconds long,