Art by Mabs

It’s not an ex-SecUnit.

Yeah, this got me, too. But mostly because it shows the arc PresAux has gone through. This is the reason SecUnit ran away in the first place! Because they treated it like it was no longer a SecUnit. Every single thing they say to it in the hotel after its been bought clearly indicates, "You aren't going to be a SecUnit anymore." No, you don't need armor. No, you won't be a bodyguard. You can do whatever you want except be yourself or fulfill your purpose.

And it's the top thing MB lists when ART asks why it left Mensah. "She offered me a home with her on Preservation, but she doesn't need me there. They don't need SecUnits there." When it's captured by colonists in Network Effect, it lists its top three issues as, "Being abandoned on a planet + locked up and forgotten with old equipment + no feed access." Like, they really managed to hit two out of three with that idyllic retirement offer. Go to a planet where nobody needs you and you can be forgotten about and put away safely as a tool nobody uses anymore.

But it comes back to help them when they need a SecUnit. They have to accept it as a SecUnit because they have come to understand that they do, in fact, need one, and that's what their friend is.

That’s when it dawned on me that Hostile One was a Combat SecUnit.