Chapter 19

Murderbot awakens suspended in a dark shaft after being shot, discovering it has been imprisoned in a storage facility built atop a Pre-Corporation Rim site containing alien remnant contamination. After escaping the restraints, Murderbot encounters Murderbot 2.0, a sentient copy of itself deployed as killware, and together they detect an unidentified distress signal emanating from deeper in the complex. Murderbot finds a dead human body overgrown with crystalline growths, revealing that TargetControlSystem is not a standard AI but something far more sinister.

Murderbot regains consciousness hanging suspended from cables in a massive dark shaft, restrained by an inactive assembler. After restarting systems and downing pain sensors, Murderbot systematically escapes the restraints by disconnecting its wrist joint and detaching its hand, then climbs back up the shaft. It discovers the location is a Pre-Corporation Rim storage facility built over an underground vault containing the alien remnant contamination site, marked with warning signals and hazard stripes. After accessing an adjacent stone-walled foyer with active feed access, Murderbot encounters Murderbot 2.0, a sentient copy of itself created as killware deployed by ART. Murderbot 2.0 provides crucial intelligence: the explorer is permanently disabled, ART's crew has been recovered, and a distress signal is being transmitted on old Pre-CR language codes from within the complex. The two discuss TargetControlSystem's control of the upper levels and UnidentifiedSender's trapped signal below. Murderbot follows the signal through empty storage corridors and a large hangar, discovering Pre-CR technology including a central star-shaped system component. Inside the control room, Murderbot finds a dead human corpse wrapped in white crystalline growth from the alien remnant, connected to the central system. Upon scanning for subsurface signals, Murderbot and Murderbot 2.0 discover that TargetControlSystem is not a separate entity but rather the network of active connections extending from the dead human's body itself, webbed throughout the installation.