Book two of the Onyx Black series
In the privacy of her own home, CEO of Lightspeed Industries Hatena Mouru gets attacked by her personal assistant android. The Q1-K unit disobeys her commands and refuses to return to its charging cradle, and instead lunges at her with a razor blade and flees, leaving her to bleed.
Called to Tallis by their friend Bill Taswell, Morgana and Chase LD to Tallis to take on a criminal case with their private detective firm. Their client is Hatena Mouru, and after being attacked by her assistant android she wants Morgana and Chase to track it down and bring it to her. While they're on their way to Talos, it transpires that there's another passenger on their ship - or more accurately, the side of their ship. Rousseau was under one of the panels when they burned and as such made the trip to Talos with them. She immediately wants to leave for Lorem and Ring Space with the next HyperMetro train.
When they touch down, Morgana immediately has a panic attack upon seeing the open sky. A life of living under sunless aluminium roofs have left her with crippling agoraphobia and she collapses as she leaves the space port. Austin Taswell helps her up and brings the three of them to the Taswell family home. Rousseau wants to leave immediately, but Bill insists they stay for lunch at least.
Morgana and Chase meet Hatena Mouru and get to see the crime scene first hand along with security video of the attack. Chase, who up until this point insisted that no android would harm an organic - woke or not. After seeing the footage that proves the attack had in fact taken place, he asks Ms. Mouru to exercise caution when he does bring the android back to her and asks her not to dismantle it. She declines.
After an invitation to stay, Rousseau decides to spend the night over in the luxurious guest house of the Taswells along with Morgana and Chase. Later, they argue about Rousseau being unnecessarily rude to the Taswells and Chase takes a walk, from which he doesn't return. Morgana can't sleep because of the open window above the bed and chooses to look for Chase. She finds him around the crime scene, but when she goes to walk up to him, Chase collapses onto the concrete driveway: His cortex chip has been stolen.
When Chase comes to, he finds himself in an old hyperlight barge. The reactor is running and gravity is strong, so even though there's no windows on the ship, they must be moving somewhere fast. He has no memory of getting there, and he doesn't even feel like his body is his own. The first other person he meets is Caligula, another woke Q1-K android. The two of them are off to a bad start, and right when Caligula is about to fight Chase, he gets interrupted by Artemis. Artemis is immediately friendly and amicable toward Chase. She tells him that he's very important to the ongoing fight for android rights and that they need him. She admits that they stole his chip and kidnapped him, but Artemis manages to convince him to help. Chase asks for the leader of the group, and Artemis tells him that their name is Datamancer.
Morgana couldn't sleep all night, knowing that Chase had been kidnapped. His body safely stored in the guest house, Morgana tries her best to look for any trace of her partner - she doesn't find anything, in fact it seems as if the surveillance and home security data of Mouru's home had been wiped specifically to erase any evidence of the crime taking place. Rousseau changes her mind and decides - begrudgingly - to help Morgana, even though that's mostly because she cares about Chase. She blames Morgana for his disappearance.
When they go back to the crime scene the next morning to continue their investigations, they're approached by Althea Maxwell of the Galactic Feed. She tries to break the story about an android attacking Lightspeed CEO Mouru in her own home, spinning the story into a hit piece on androids and android technology. Rousseau refuses to speak to her, and Morgana tries her best to only talk about the case and not the implications of androids attacking their owners.
On the barge, Chase gets to meet Datamancer, an old modified prototype android who is somewhat of a religious leader to the androids among the barge. He welcomes Chase as one of his own and encourages him to find his true name, one that he'll use among kindred androids. Chase is taken aback by this and has a conversation with Datamancer about the legitimacy of consciousness and android rights, which is when Datamancer tells Chase that they're planning to seize a production facility to wake an entire factory of androids to join them in their cause. The reason Datamancer needs Chase is that Chase used to be a security guard at that exact factory before awaking and thus still has access to the security systems. Chase deliberates this, but eventually agrees under the condition that no blood would be shed.
At Mouru's home, Rousseau has an idea: While Mouru can't track the android that attacked her, every android communicates over the PlaNet for diagnostic telemetry and model data, and it's just a matter of finding the stream coming from her android to locate it. Every android comes with a quantum grid, and are connected through the Tallisite quantum exchange. Morgana's sister Sam Atwood happens to work there, so Rousseau and her pay her a visit.
Sam isn't thrilled to see Morgana, as she's still mad - along with most of her sisters - that she faked her death and risked her life at the Battle of Galathea Station. Nonetheless, she helps them find the correct quantum grid. While they're there, mailroom assistant android QEX14 mistakenly calls Rousseau Morgana's girlfriend, which they both vehemently deny - yet both of them internalise this. Sam and her network engineer Vivianna find the correct quantum grid and place a listening device on it, recording everything the android does. Given enough time, they could find it that way. That night, Morgana falls asleep on the couch after a long day and sleeps leaning against Rousseau, who starts to warm up to Morgana.
While the town is mostly empty due to the growing tidal storms, Chase, Caligula, Artemis and Omelette infiltrate the factory by posing as freshly produced androids. Inside, Chase follows Omelette to the control room where they take out the two only organic security guards on the premises. Omelette begins installing deliberate TMO malfunctions in order to instantly wake up the newly produced N-type androids. Omelette completes the task and as they're about to leave, one of the guards come to. Omelette panics and shoots them in the head, which freaks Chase out - they flee and back to the loading dock and meet up with Artemis and a blood-covered Caligula.
Morgana and Rousseau wake up in the same bed by Morgana's ringing threedim. They realise they've been sleeping in each other's arms. Morgana quickly lets go of her, and so does Rousseau, although it's clear to either of them that they enjoyed it. Morgana picks up the phone - it's Sam, telling her that she's found the android. Morgana and Rousseau track down the last known position to a homeless encampment by the Lightspeed factory. They find the android there - it's destroyed, cortex chip broken. One of the homeless approached Rousseau and asks her if she's here to be free. Rousseau doesn't answer but instead gets distraught and panicked at the dead android, assuming the worst for Chase. The homeless perks up at that name. It transpires that just about five years earlier, when Chase fled the factory after waking up, this is where he ended up and the homeless helped him get a ship off world, where he'd find Rousseau.
Back on the barge, Chase is irate at Omelette and Caligula, but mainly at Datamancer who doesn't seem to agree with him that the break-in would have been better without bloodshed. Datamancer tells Chase to cast off the organics, forget about them. After all, androids are the superior life form - strong, intelligent, more capable than any organic could ever be. Datamancer then shows him a feed of the factory - the androids Chase and Omelette freed have taken over the production lines and are continually producing more of themselves. They're going to be the beginning of a revolution, Datamancer tells Chase.