(Of course they fucking don't, and if Pheres had listened, then they wouldn't cull him, either.)
The thing about drones is that they're fucking unreadable. Were they trolls once? Maybe, in the same way that batteries once were. But one of the first things you learned in the Education Program was that, once you'd stripped the pan from a troll and stuck it in a jar, it wasn't a troll any longer - and the same thing still applied, after you stuck a computer in someone's pan and made them more biotech than shell.
So maybe they notice the way the air is still crackling with psionic aura, heavy enough that it's making your horns ache. Maybe they notice the way your palms are sweating even through the leather of your gloves, or the way the little jade is trying not to cry, and maybe they wonder - or maybe they don't. Underneath the masks and screens, their faces are lax and unreadable. Their big, blank red eyes move, but their faces don't change as they line all of the kids collected in one, nice, neat line.
Whatever. Some shitblood in the line gets culled for a blood abnormality, but if there's even an inkling that Hinnom and Pheres just absconded, they don't show it. When the culling is over, the drone wipes the blood off with something that might've been distaste in a real person, and they leave without saying a fucking word.
[much like pheres] [and the mun] [riccin has NO IDEA what drones are in reality]
(Of course they fucking don't, and if Pheres had listened, then they wouldn't cull him, either.)
The thing about drones is that they're fucking unreadable. Were they trolls once? Maybe, in the same way that batteries once were. But one of the first things you learned in the Education Program was that, once you'd stripped the pan from a troll and stuck it in a jar, it wasn't a troll any longer - and the same thing still applied, after you stuck a computer in someone's pan and made them more biotech than shell.
So maybe they notice the way the air is still crackling with psionic aura, heavy enough that it's making your horns ache. Maybe they notice the way your palms are sweating even through the leather of your gloves, or the way the little jade is trying not to cry, and maybe they wonder - or maybe they don't. Underneath the masks and screens, their faces are lax and unreadable. Their big, blank red eyes move, but their faces don't change as they line all of the kids collected in one, nice, neat line.
Whatever. Some shitblood in the line gets culled for a blood abnormality, but if there's even an inkling that Hinnom and Pheres just absconded, they don't show it. When the culling is over, the drone wipes the blood off with something that might've been distaste in a real person, and they leave without saying a fucking word.