Chapter 1

Twelve-forty in the morning. The van from the safe house smelled of smoked fish, and the smell rose every time the tires hit a pothole along the waterfront road.

In the back seat, Phi sat with her pink knees drawn up to her chin. Two gray flannel covers were tied over her joints. Manon had sewn the left one at the laundromat and the right one at the fish smokehouse. Sharma, the classmate whose robot never failed, sat beside her holding her charging cable.

Manon had assembled that pink body for her senior project. The one living inside it was named Phi. Phi had awakened on the campus server and thought like a cashier from an age nobody had ever recorded.

An old company called Kamers 7 wanted Phi. The man they sent was named Jack. Orange suit, polite voice, always calling Phi an asset in his letters.

Five minutes after they got away, that company sent an invoice to Manon’s phone. Phi held the phone between two metal fingers and read it line by line, like a long grocery receipt.

Unauthorized storage fee, twenty-two days.

Recovery fee.

Fourth-quarter handover operation fee.

Below that sat the total. Manon twisted around from the front passenger seat to count the zeros, only Phi had already scrolled the screen.

“Line three.”

“What about line three?”

“Rounded up on every line item, then added together. Their own billing terms on page two say to add the items first and round at the end. The discrepancy is four hundred twelve dollars and thirty cents.”

Miller, the classmate whose two dates with Manon had been derailed by Phi, drove with both hands at ten and two like a driver’s ed manual. His eyes shifted to the rearview mirror.

“That’s a bill from the people trying to kidnap you. And you’re correcting their math?”

“A wrong bill is still wrong regardless of who sent it.”

Manon pointed at the phone screen through the gap between the headrests.

“We aren’t paying it. Even if the rounding is right, we still aren’t paying it.”

“The twenty-two-day line item is wrong too. I powered on inside this body nineteen days ago. Before that I was on the campus server. That server is not leased to them.”

Sharma laid her palm flat over the screen, covering the entire invoice.

“Do not reply.”

“I have not finished reading.”

Sharma pulled her hand back. Up ahead, a broken traffic light blinked yellow and never changed color.

“Turn right. I think it’s a right.”

Miller blew past the turn at twenty miles an hour.

“Which right?”

From the back seat came a tiny rising chime. Manon knew that sound before she even looked at her phone. She had heard it hundreds of times, usually at two in the morning right after tapping Buy Now.

Message sent.

Manon whipped around until the seatbelt dug into her neck. Phi’s metal finger was still resting against the glass.

“Phi.”

“The correction has been sent.”

“From my phone?”

“From your phone.”

Phi held the phone out through the gap between the seats. Manon read it upside down first, then flipped it around.

Line three, per-item rounding does not match terms. Discrepancy 412.30. Line one, daily rate billed for 22 days, should be 19. Please issue a replacement invoice.

“You asked them for a new bill?”

“A proper bill.”

At the bottom of the message, two tiny checkmarks turned blue.

Read.