Hal carried the unconscious blonde to the guest room, which was a tiny space just big enough for a full-sized bed and a large trunk full of extra bedding. Some of Dero's macabre art was on the walls. Amy and Geordi had spent a couple of nights in that room, and she recalled how difficult it had been to sleep with monsters and bloodied warriors staring at her. She wondered how this unnamed person would react to waking to them.

Amy and Hal went about cleaning the rest of the house to the best of their ability. Without a vacuum, they had to resort to using a broom to scrape up as much of the dirt as possible. Dero did not seem to notice this as he worked at his computer, listening to some rather intense-sounding music through his headphones so he could tune out the world.

They had much of the floor cleaned—as clean as they could get it—by the time Dero set down his headphones and turned in his chair as he called to Amy. She handed Hal the broom, leaving him to clean by himself, and she went to Dero's side, looking at the multiple screens.

"It wasn't easy because they have a genius helping them, but I got in."

Amy snorted as a grin spread on his face, but she let him continue.

"What exactly are you looking for?"

"I don't know. Just information that they haven't made public yet, I guess."

Dero brought up a screen listing recent cases, and there was a brief description of a dead body that had been found on the day Geordi had gone to the recycling plant in Indianapolis. Amy told him to look at it. Photos of the investigators appeared first. One was a woman named Lieutenant Pinkerton, and in her picture, she looked rather bored like she would have rather been anywhere else at that moment, and the other was a man named Ezra who looked older than her, despite being lower in rank.

The hacker stiffened, and Amy frowned at him.

"Oh, no," Dero said.

"What?"

"I recognize that lady."

"The lieutenant?"

"Yeah, I had to go into the station for—for reasons, and there was some drunk guy who was causing a scene, I guess you could say. She's not a small woman by any means, but the dude was huge. She picked him and body slammed the dude like he was a featherweight. Amy, if she comes here because of this, I just might flee into the next state."

"I don't think you have any reason to worry about her wrestling with you."

"She defied the laws of physics, I promise you."

"Whatever. Let's see the evidence and stuff."

Amy flinched as Dero scrolled down the page. There were some gruesome pictures of a dead body laying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. She looked at Dero, and she was surprised to see him grimacing, despite enjoying movies full of gore and over-the-top violence. When she glanced back at the screen, there were some pictures of a large android, which looked like it belonged in a mecha anime, and there was some blood on its hands.

"Androids did this?" Dero said, frowning.

"Androids? News reports haven't said that at all."

"I imagine the CEO of Hollywood Android doesn't want people to stop buying their products after spending millions of dollars on some of these projects. It's weird, though: its hard drive was found completely wiped. There wasn't even an operating system on it."

"I'm not the tech genius here, but doesn't that take a super long time?"

“Yeah, normally, but I guess whoever made these androids do it must have figured out how to wipe it in not even half an hour. That's how long it was estimated they would have had time to do that."

"Geordi is more of a hardware kind of girl, so I know she doesn't know how to do that."

"It's not as unusual as you think, unfortunately. I have a tool somewhere around here that I can use to do that."

"You do?"

"It's not illegal, really, but it's expensive. I got it for cheap myself because of old underground connections I used to have. AI developers use it when they need to scrap a faulty project. Criminals use it to sabotage a company."

"Why do you have that?"

"I'm pretty sure I was high when I bought it. I only know what happened because of a few messages on my phone the day after."

"And you wonder why I keep telling you to stay away from that stuff."

Dero turned to her, raising his chin in defiance, but there was a subtle tilt in his lips that indicated how he really felt about it.

"You're not my mom. You can't make me."

“I met your mom once. She seems to have no idea about some of the things you’re into, so someone has to.”

“I can turn you in. I can even do it without the police knowing it was me.”

Amy shrugged. He threatened that every time she saw him, but considering all the help he had given them, she knew it was empty.

"I think we should get through those documents as quickly as possible, considering you could get in trouble for this."

"Oh, right."

Dero went back to reading through the case. There were some more pictures of a person lying dead on the ground, but there was no blood this time. His face was blue, and bruises circled around his neck. After that, there were some images of a girl—an android judging by the way she sat hunched in the chair.

"There was a second case a couple days ago," Dero said. "An android killed him, and her system was wiped the same way as the first case."

"Two people? The news hasn't said anything about that."

“This one somehow was down in even more of a hurry than the other one because there scratches around the connection ports on the back of the neck.”

“The owner could have easily done that, too.”

"It happened a few blocks away from here."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, he lived here in Heritage, and now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I've seen him at the grocery store a few times."

"That's weird to think about."

"Yeah, but it turns out he and the first victim used to own an android tech company that went bankrupt. It was called ‘Cybershell.’"

Amy frowned at that. She had heard of that name in the news before, but she was certain there was a detail she had forgotten. When she looked back at the screens, she found Dero closing the programs he had used to get into the IMPD's database.

"Is that everything?"

Dero turned his chair to look at her.

"Geordi was only connected because of some fingerprints they found on the first body, and there is a video of two people running through the facility. They look suspiciously like that Geordi and Sean."

"You mean, Scotty," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Whatever his name is."

Amy only nodded as the feeling of disappointment settled into her belly. She looked at her knees, frowning.

"Well, thank you, Dero."

"You didn't seem to learn what you were hoping to learn, did you?"

"I'm not sure if it'll be useful to me or not."

"They don't really think that Geordi killed anyone. One of the notes actually stated that she was most likely only there at the wrong time, and she's only guilty of trespassing and theft."

"They'll still be looking for her because of that, though."

"Yeah, just keep laying low. It'll all be over in a while, I'm sure of it."

Amy sighed, but she nodded. She looked for Hal, but he seemed to have moved on to another room.

"Thank you again, Dero," she said, "but Hal and I should get back to Geordi."

Dero grabbed the arm of her wheelchair, and he fixed a serious look on his face.

"Listen, be careful, okay? This isn't a good time to trust anyone, so—just be extra careful, okay?"

Amy raised an eyebrow at that. It was her instinct to say something sarcastic, but she was certain she had never seen him make a face like that.

"Yeah, sure."

"Good. And thanks for cleaning the house," he added as an afterthought. "I kind of let it get really bad here, so yeah, thank you."

Amy just shrugged her shoulders, uncertain how to respond to behavior that was odd for him. She called for Hal, and the large android came out of the hallway with the broom and dustpan in hand. After more thank-yous exchanged between the two of them, Amy and Hal left Dero alone in his messy house.