(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? Sure, in the same way that batteries once were. But one of the first things they 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 makes Riccin's horns ache. Maybe they notice their sweaty palms, or the way Marduk 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 not their faces.
Whatever. Some shitblood 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.
[OA has no idea what the fuck drones are in reality][they're running off academy rumours here]
(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? Sure, in the same way that batteries once were. But one of the first things they 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 makes Riccin's horns ache. Maybe they notice their sweaty palms, or the way Marduk 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 not their faces.
Whatever. Some shitblood 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.