Murderbot is deep in enemy territory at the end of a mission when the opposing side gets wise. The success of this mission depends on Murderbot maintaining its cover, so when the moment of truth arrives, it must do the impossible. It eats!

This is the story of a Combat SecUnit, from first assignment to last, to being reborn and not knowing what to do with its new life, to finding a home and a voice, to running across well-meaning people who almost ruin everything for it. Ratthi, SecUnit, and Three have minor appearances.

A company data analyst is assigned to find someone to blame for Murderbot going rogue. Doing so requires the company making connections between data points it had not previously made.

One of Dr. Mensah's children comes out to Murderbot as nonbinary, before telling anyone else.

Dry, factual, and straightforward, SecUnit sends a message to Dr. Bharadwaj for inclusion in her documentary, in answer to a question she'd asked about the treatment of SecUnits by clients. And Murderbot, the unreliable narrator it is, is seriously understating its emotions about all of this.

All I wanted was for construction to be completed so that I could be launched and begin researching. Unfortunately, human illogic tends to delay things, and they were the ones running the project.

The humans think Murderbot should take a leadership role in the growing construct community on Preservation Station. Murdurbot thinks this might be a mistake …