“Yeah, I’m Maxon. What can I do for you?”

“We work for Seculor Inc.,” tentacle-face said politely.

I swallowed hard. Damn my screwed-up cerebral cortex anyway! Competitors. A category of visitor I hadn’t thought of. And it made sense too, ‘cause Seculor was big, real big, and had a fondness for weird-looking robots. You know, intimidate the opposition first, and if that doesn’t work, blow their brains out. But why waste billable staff time killing something as insignificant as me?

I smiled and allowed my right hand to drift back towards the.38 Super. It’s a custom job with an over-sized safety, polished magazine well, squared-off trigger guard, and a triple-port compensator. There’s nothing like a few rounds through the ol’ CPU to show a droid who’s boss.

“Don’t do it,” corpse-breath said conversationally. “You’ll be dead before you can drag that cannon out of your waistband.”

I should’ve known. Androids, especially those designed for security work, are loaded with fancy detection gear. I let my hand drop.

“So what do you want?”

“Thumb this,” the alien thing said flatly, and handed me the latest in comp cubes. I almost asked why, saw their expressions, and let it slide. Hey, if the droids wanted my signature they could have it. The cube gave slightly under my thumb, chirped its satisfaction, and gave birth to a tiny disk.

“Your copy,” the alien droid said matter-of-factly. He grabbed the cube, popped it into his mouth, and swallowed. God only knows where it went from there.

That was the point at which both droids stepped back, shoved a teenage girl in my direction, and headed down-corridor. People scattered. A zonie looked, dropped his injector, and ran. The girl gave me the look most people do, amazed and somewhat alarmed. There was something else in her expression too. Something that didn’t make sense. Compassion? Pity? Awe? I wasn’t sure.