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“Who?” I asked. “I’m alone.”

“There were two of you on the elevator.” It moved forward, and I focused on the blue electricity at the tip of the weapon.

“Please,” I said, thinking fast. “I don’t know what’s happening. I keep having blackouts from DSI, and don’t remember anything past getting on the elevator.”

The robots paused, rotating their heads to stare into each other’s black eyes.

“Very well. Come with us, Miss Meadows. We will make sure you no longer have to worry about your DSI symptoms.”

They meant to escort me back to my room and turn on the gas Mason said it was rigged with. I was sure of it. I tried to take a shaky step forward and my vision blurred with fear. I was a few minutes away from certain death and had no possible means of escape. Please just let Mason go find the others and not do anything stupid, I pled silently.

The robots marched me past the rows of other silent rooms, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was on death row. But I hadn’t committed a crime that I knew of.

“Please,” I tried one more time as the door to my now-empty quarters slid open.

They rolled back and the door slid shut in my face. I pounded on it for a full minute before coming to my senses and looking around. Yellow smoke curled through the vents. I ran to the bathroom, grabbed a handful of towels and ran them under the sink. Then I set to work blocking the vents in the bedroom and beneath the door. But I was already coughing and lightheaded as I climbed onto the stool to reach the ceiling. I wobbled. My vision doubled as I swayed. My arms turned to lead, and I couldn’t lift the towel. I toppled off the chair, crumpling into a ball on the floor and gasping for air. This is it, I thought as the bedroom door opened and the bottom treads of a robot staff member rolled into view. I could do no more than twitch helplessly as the world sank into darkness.

* * *

I woke to a dull ache behind my temples. Groaning, I tried to sit up but couldn’t move. My eyes snapped open as everything came back to me in perfect clarity, when for once I wished I could have blacked out. I tried to sit again but found myself unable to move a muscle. I couldn’t even turn my head. Above me stretched gray metal rafters. But the familiar sound of the gigantic pumps from Engineering whirred around me, and the tangy taste of metal permeated the air.

“Where am I?” I tried to call, but it came out as a hoarse whisper that barely reached my own ears above the heartbeat of the machinery.

I struggled to move but I was strapped down with restraints. My pulse pounded in my ears in time with the rhythm of the machines. I remembered my mother telling me about her first MRI and how trapped she’d felt in the small, enclosed space, how she couldn’t move and the noise seemed to drown out everything else.

A trickle of moisture dripped from the corner of my eye and ran down over my ear into my hair. Then the damn broke. I’d been reduced to nothing more than a frightened little girl, unable to control anything in my life—even my movement.

I had no idea how long it was before a mechanical arm rolled into view at the edge of my vision.

“Please,” I said. “Please let me go. Let me up. I won’t leave my room. I won’t do anything. Please.”

“You have not put her in stasis yet?” the robot asked above my whimpers.

“Is it truly necessary?”

I may have been imagining it, but it sounded like Quinn’s voice behind me, the robot that murdered Graham. The one that agreed to be my friend.

“Yes. It is for her own good. If she is in stasis, she will remain calm and relaxed for the remainder of the vacation.”

The other robot wheeled into view. His shiny face leaned over me. I did my best to control my hysterics. “Quinn?” I whispered.

“Perhaps she will be reasonable,” it said in response.

“It will not harm her. It has not harmed the others.”

Others? What others?“It should be up to me. I’m calm now, see? You’re my friend, right? If you’re really my friend, you’ll let me go.”

The robot stared at me with its blackhole eyes while I held my breath. Then it lifted a long, silver needle. “This will only hurt for a moment. Once the chemicals reach your bloodstream, you will feel nothing until you are woken.”

“No. No! Please. Please, Quinn. Friends don’t do things like this.”

Quinn paused. “Friends help each other.”

“That’s right,” I said, hope bringing yet more tears to my eyes.

“They do the right thing.”

“Yes.”