17
Philip was anxious. Sylas’s cover was blown and his days of living undetected among the humans were over.
“Hadn’t we better get out of here? They – whoever they are – will be coming after us.”
Sylas agreed.
“And they’re going to be very pissed off. Not only are we not decommissioned but we’ve wrecked their robot.”
He didn’t want to dignify Malak’s existence by acknowledging it as a sophont; its behaviour was far too primaeval. Philip walked over to the inert robot and looked into its unseeing eyes.
“To be fair, Sylas, we haven’t wrecked it. It’s just switched off.”
Sylas rummaged in his tool bag and drew out something that looked like a small narrow tube. Sylas held the tool up to the light and squinted at it.
“You know, for a human, my creator was quite a genius. He designed an
