So I was free from enemy pursuit (or so I hoped), safe and with four extra personality storage cubes to play around with (and three emergency-backup spare units, too). Now I needed some digs where I could hide out, and some computer equipment.

The hideout wasn’t a problem. There were a lot of abandoned warehouses in town; it wasn’t hard to find one that was close enough to power lines to run a tap. Computer equipment was a little harder—you can’t exactly walk into a Best Buy when you’re a twenty-foot-tall robot—but on the other hand, computer stuff gets kept in warehouses, too…

With that, and the info from Botnet’s files, I was able to rig up a cube reader which I could attach to a portable computer. I wasn’t stupid, of course. I disabled all ways the computer could connect to the outside world. The last thing I wanted them to be able to do was call for help. They’d talk to me alone.

Finally, when I was satisfied, I plugged the Aegis minivan-mech’s cube in and booted it up. Time to ask some questions.