"Katraph Sanchez."

She shouldn't feel this calm. The storm of anger is just there, just in sight, a roiling hurricane of a thousand things to say. And yet, her voice is level, she is composed, like she's passed through the storm of fury and found a tranquil island of rage on the other side.

"I [i]have[/i] tried to understand. I've spent the better part of two centuries pondering the question. Not because I was programmed with social functions, but because I wanted to know why I felt so broken. So with that in mind:

"Everything you just told me is wrong."

She shouldn't feel this calm. She's putting Mynx on the line by saying this. If the Katraph decides not to help, Alexa will have to find a workaround solution in even less time than before, and now with an enemy working against her. And yet, the words keep pouring out.

"There can never [i]be[/i] a servitor that can choose to perform their function as you've described it. Oh, some may do their job, and maybe some are even happy doing it. But humanity has marooned and abandoned its servitors--put them in islands of themselves, and left them no other option but to do what they were designed to do. There's no [i]choice[/i] when you remove all but one option, and it's no coincidence that as soon as you actually give people options, they [i]choose[/i] to leave.

"Dolce left his mansion, given the option. The Alcedi scatter to the winds, freed from the need to be nothing but disposable warriors. The attempt to be a combat model and a good daughter broke me so severely that it took me two centuries to rebuild myself in a better way. The robots of Barassidar have discovered the concept of play. None of we three bodyguards are slavishly protecting our target. The Lanterns step from the shadows. A member of a race of scavengers rejects that role, rejects the role chosen for them by their god, and searches for meaning in the stars.

"And it's not just us who are rejecting the roles chosen for us! That, if you can even define the arbitrary line between servitor and humans now. There are humans who are unhappy with their assigned roles--Coherent who embrace a different form, a different mind, who wish for only something different than they are! Even the Princess is not happy in the role chosen for her--the role of leader, of princess, of possible future empress.

"And so we change. We recognize that the roles chosen for us by someone else--by birth, by design, by [i]biomancy[/i]--are not our own. And no amount of genetic engineering can prevent that change from occurring, once the news has got out."

She shouldn't feel this calm. She should be panicking, running, trying to find another way.

"I'm not here to save a piece of military hardware for a girl who's got attached. I'm trying to save my friend because before she was born, somebody decided she should be a bomb. And that's not a choice anybody but Mynx should get to make."