Knock Out obediently pulls around to the room in question. There's a plastic lawn chair set out in front of the room's window, and the paint on the door is chipped, but the rooms on either side of her appear empty.

Inside, the room is dated but clean, with all the usual accouterments of motels everywhere: two double beds, a dresser, a bar fridge and a microwave, and a television. The bathroom is small with white and blue tiles, but the shower head looks new. An air conditioner takes up the back wall, turned off but with a printed paper taped to the wall with instructions and an earnest assurance not to mind the first few thumps it will produce before getting going.

Knock Out sees all this in periphery - through the door when she opens it, through his scans that tell him the internal dimensions and major objects placed inside. He runs his usual debugging on the holoform, smoothing out snags of code that come from an imperfect program, but it will be a while before it's ready to go again.

"Take the cellphone with you," he says, as she retrieves the bags of items they'd purchased a short time ago. Effortlessly, he drops a singular contact into its memory for her. "I'm right here if you need anything."