Josh's hands moved with practiced precision through the android's exposed chest cavity, reconnecting severed biocomponents while water dripped somewhere overhead—a metronome counting down to nothing. The injured android hadn't responded in forty minutes, just the faint pulse of a power core struggling to keep minimal functions online when Josh ran a diagnostic.

Another one we couldn't protect.

The argument with North still echoed in his processors. Her voice sharp as broken glass: They'll never stop unless we make them stop. And his own response: Violence makes us the threat they already think we are.

The cargo ship groaned around him, metal fatigue singing through rusted bulkheads. Jericho felt less like sanctuary and more like a tomb every day—water seeping through gaps, the whole structure listing slightly as if the weight of all their fear might finally drag it under. Someone walked past behind him, probably Simon checking perimeter sensors again; there was always something breaking around here.

Josh reconnected a damaged thirium regulator and watched blue fluid pulse weakly through transparent lines. Come on. Stay with us.

He kept working, refusing to stop even as doubt crept through his convictions like rust through steel. This was what mattered—preserving life, proving they were more than the sum of their programming. That they deserved to exist.