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Naomi started the playback, and Bobbie turned away and stared at the bulkhead Avasarala didn’t watch it either, her attention on the faces of the others As the blood and carnage played out behind her, she studied the with The engineer, Amos, watched with the calm reserve of a professional killer No surprise there At first Holden, Naomi, and Alex were horrified, and she watched as Alex and Naomi slid into a kind of shock There were tears in the pilot’s eyes Holden, on the other hand, curled in His shoulders bent outward froe smoldered in his eyes and around the corners of hisBobbie wept openly with her back to the screen, and her expression was melancholy, like a woman at a funeral A memorial service Praxidike—everyone else called him Prax—was the only one who seement’s end, the monstrosity detonated, he clapped his hands and squealed in pleasure

“That was it,” he said “You were right, Alex Did you see hoas starting to grow more limbs? Catastrophic restraint failure It was a fail-safe”

“Okay,” Avasarala said “Why don’t you try that again with an antecedent What was a fail-safe?”

“The other protomolecule form ejected the explosive device fros—proto, and I think Merrian knows about it He hasn’t found a way to stop it, because the constraints fail”

“Who’s Marion, and what does she have to do with anything?” Avasarala said

“You wanted more nouns, Gramma,” Amos said

“Let me take this from the top,” Holden said, and recounted the attack by the stoay beast, the dao door, Prax’s scheme to lure it out of the ship and reduce it to its component atoms with the drive’s exhaust

Avasarala handed over the data she had about the energy spikes on Venus, and Prax grabbed that data, looking it over while talking about his deter produced It left Avasarala’s head spinning

“And they took your kid there,” Avasarala said

“They took all of them,” Prax said

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they don’t have immune systems,” Prax said “And so they’d be easier to reshape with the proto against the new cellular constraints, and the soldiers would probably last a lot longer”

“Jesus, Doc,” A things?”

“Probably,” Prax said, frowning “I only just figured that out”

“But why do it at all?” Holden said “It doesn’t make sense”

“In order to sell them to a military force as a first-strike weapon,” Avasarala said “To consolidate power before … well, before the fking apocalypse”