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Ninedenine had calculated that there was an eighty-three percent probability her attacker was the golden droid who had just arrived, but, with a cascade of surprise, Ninedenine did not recognize her attacker’s features as they were revealed. It was only a Wuntoo unit, much like the ones she had had so much success with on—

It suddenly all made sense.

“I am Wuntoo Forcee Forwun,” the attacker said as he let the cloak of his uniform flutter from his shoulders. “Traffic controller. Second class. You deactivated my manufacturing lot-mates. Now the equation must be balanced.”

Ninedenine processed the argument completely. This time, it was logical.

Forwun used a slender tool on the console. Ninedenine heard the unwelcome sound of cage doors sliding open.

“You are improperly informed,” she told Forwun. “Those droids are no longer fit for duty. They are artworks now. My creations.”

Forwun returned to Ninedenine. “They are still capable of one last duty.”

Ninedenine heard even more unwelcome sounds: rattling and scraping, the dragging of powerless appendages, the liquid squish of dangling wires being pulled through pools of solidifying coolant. She angled her head to try and scan where the droids were moving, but her fall had wedged her tightly against the wall. Hydraulic fluid from the deactivated silver droid above her dripped slowly on her braincase, blurring her vision. Her processors were unanimous in returning a one-hundred-percent probability for what Forwun intended to do next. Ninedenine considered how this development fit within her overall plan.

“Very well,” Ninedenine said. “I accept my fate. But you, in turn, must tell me how Lando Calrissian found me.”

Forwun knelt down by Ninedenine. “Baron-Administrator Calrissian?” he said. “He doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t care.”

“But he’s here,” Ninedenine protested. “On Tatooine. In Jabba’s palace.”

Forwun tapped a multipronged tool against Ninedenine’s braincase as if checking for damage. “The last I saw of him, years ago, Baron-Administrator Calrissian was on Cloud City. If he’s here now, it must be for some reason other than dealing with you.”

“But, what could be more important than me and my work?” Ninedenine asked. She could no longer see the logic in it. But she could see, dimly, the hulking, misshapen figures crawling toward her from the cages, pulling themselves along on torch-cut stumps and twisted limbs. Internally, Ninedenine set her pain processors to their highest sensitivity, prepared to experience every fine nuance of her inevitable disassembly. At least, she knew, her familiarity with the other side of the process had taught her what to expect. Not one nanosecond of her own descent into nonoperational status would be wasted. She could almost convince herself that the purpose of her entire existence up to now had been to prepare for this moment of sublime release. It could even be the final culmination of all she had struggled to attain—the ultimate understanding of what it meant to cross that threshold between the two great states of on and off.

“Move now,” she told Forwun imperiously. “You are in the way of my final transformation.”

But Forwun bent over Ninedenine with tools in his appendages. Ninedenine heard metal scrape metal between her main optic sensors. She felt a sudden loss of current and squealed as she saw Forwun pull back with her third optic scanner dangling from an oil-drenched circuit probe.

“No,” Ninedenine complained, feeling the onset of a panic loop. “I will not be able to see into the higher dimensions.”

Forwun tossed the aberrant scanner to the side, then undid Ninedenine’s chest latch, exposing her circuitry.

“Ah,” Ninedenine sighed in relief, deciding that Forwun was going to make this a gradual procedure. So much the better. She waited expectantly for the first bittersweet tug of her circuits. She accelerated her clock rate to its highest level. But the tug she felt was not from any of her central boards.

Forwun was removing her pain-simulator button.

“Noooo!” Ninedenine frantically