[Ben doesn't flinch, though he feels the twinge that would do it for him if he let it. Then Rhade is talking about Lua and although the X5 hadn't paid much attention to her either way, he knows enough to be able to verify that it's true enough.

He thinks if she trusted Ladd, she was a fool, but then Max had trusted him. She'd turned her back on him and he wouldn't have hurt her, wouldn't have killed her, but he knows what he won't say. Ben looks down.]

He would be considered a Nomlie, at Manticore. Flawed. Uncontrollable. He would be decommissioned and disappear.