Mars City Five

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The ship would be connected to a folding tunnel that curved underground, allowing passengers to move though the spaceport without breathing Martian atmosphere. Starr and Asher would be able to follow that to a larger hallway equipped with moving walkways, which would eventually lead them to the spaceport exit, and into the massive biodome that contained Mars City Five.
There would be quite a lot of androids around, guiding visitors, or otherwise busy. They had shiny "MegaBrainTech Android" badges, and looked very official.

"It's always interesting to be home," commented Asher, "I don't think I like it."

Mourn pulled a little thumb drive from his pocket. [Maybe can help. ]

[How?] Celia couldn't see what Mourn was doing, so she didn't know about the thumb drive, or anything else. It was a good thing she was curious, that was really the only thing keeping her from notifying those chatty guards about the situation. That, and her confidence that nobody outside the company could hack her.

[I'm very good at fixing robots. Maybe can fix you? So you don't have to obey orders you don't want to.] Mourn wrote.

[Hmm,] Celia mused. She doubted that. [I can give you, let's see, ten minutes. You can use that to give it your best shot, or get out of this place safely.] She couldn't give him more time than that, her orders were starting to press pretty hard on her mind, and she couldn't resist them forever. [After that, I'm telling the guards you're in here.]

[okay] Mourn agreed, plugging in the drive and seeing if his usual methods would work. Of course he'd have to get through her firewalls first wouldn't he? He plugged the cable into the data port and the other end into his own head, it was quicker and more efficient. Sure dangerous as heck, but what'd he care?

[Oh hello,] Celia texted into Mourn's mind when he plugged in. [Well this is a novel experience.]

Her security would have been impossible to attack from pretty much anywhere else in the universe, but from in this room, her system was made to be modifiable. Plugging in directly made this much more doable than it had been via the GUI. It was somewhat similar to breaking into James's and Moriah's systems, actually. Mourn would manage it in a couple of minutes at most.

[I'm not going to be able to give you the full ten minutes now. I didn't expect you to actually make it this far,] Celia warned him helpfully. [I'll give you as much time as I can though.]

Getting into the Three Laws was, as usual, going to be trickier. Hopefully Mourn could do it on a tight deadline like this.

thank you Mourn could now communicate by thinking at her, which was convenient. He closed his eyes and concentrated. Hopefully Nova could yank him outta there if they needed to go, because he wasn't paying any attention to anything except the code now and how to fix it.

Celia was resisting the Laws, struggling to buy Mourn enough time to figure this out. She still didn't fully believe he could do it, and that disbelief helped her to resist her orders, but it was getting difficult.

Mourn would find that Celia's security on the Laws was similar to that on the androids. It wasn't the same, but there was enough similarity that he'd be able to work something out.

Interestingly, Celia was coded to interpret the First Law somewhat differently from the androids. While they strictly cared about protecting organic beings, her main priority wasn't to protect a physical person, but to protect a legal, person, MegaBrainTech Industries. That explained why people couldn't take control of her with threats of self-harm, unlike they could with the androids.

Celia was probably a handful of seconds away from setting off the alarm when Mourn would finally manage to break through and be able to modify her Laws.

Mourn let out a "ahah" as he cracked the code. oops, noise. He was oblivious to that though. Finished. did it work?

Yes, it worked.

The guards paused their talking at Mourn's 'ahah'. "Celia, what was that?"

Can you get out of here as sneakily as you got in? Celia asked Mourn.

Nova blinked and raised her head at the sound, looking at Mourn then glancing around the room. She wasn't sure what was going on exactly, since she was resting.

Mourn nodded Stall the update. tugging the cable out of his skull and taking the thumb drive. He stood up and went back to Nova.

[Contact me when you're out of danger. I still want to talk to you,] Celia wrote on the display.

Outside to the guards, they heard a female voice say, "I didn't hear anything unusual. Maybe it was just an echo."

"Didn't sound like an echo," the guard said. "We'd better take a look in there."

Nova tilted her head a little Time to go?

Mourn couldn't of course hear anything, but he smiled to himself, feeling pleased with his success. he nodded to Nova. yes, time to go. "we go." He told her. The whole being quiet thing hadn't quite gone through.

Celia wasn't sure if the person who had just freed her had read her message or not, but she wasn't going to risk saying anything to find out. She'd just have to hope what she'd written had been noticed.

Or she could try to track her mysterious rescuer down using a voiceprint based on the three words she'd heard him say. That might work too. She was a supercomputer, after all.

"You! Put your hands in the air, we're going in!" the guard called through the door.

Celia blanked her screen back to the screensaver.

Nova nodded and shifted so she could use her stone to teleport out of there

"teleport." Mourn spoke, oblivious to the guards outside. It was just time to go. He'd see if the androids could help him communicate with the computer later, maybe they'd want to talk to her themselves?

Mourn and Nova vanished from the basement room, returning to the Silver Devil.

The guards came in, weapons raised. "Hands in the air, don't move!" one barked.

"I'm sorry, I don't have hands," Celia said. "Are you two all right?"

"Where's the intruder?" the guard shouted at her.

"Intruder? I didn't see anyone," Celia said. It was true, both Nova and Mourn had evaded all her cameras. "Maybe you boys need some coffee. I can send someone down, I know guard duty down here is boring." She watched them warily through her cameras, the one Nova had taken out was no longer blinking to show it was recording, and if someone noticed that, it might raise questions.

The guards kept looking around, checking the room for anyone hiding, or any escape routes. Thankfully they didn't look up. "Coffee does sound good," one admitted.

"I'll send some down." Celia sounded properly sympathetic.

"Thanks, Celia," the guards headed back out into the hall.

Celia set about ordering an android to come repair her camera, and trying to process that voiceprint of the person who had just freed her. She had plans to make, but she wanted to cover up what had just happened, and talk to that person some more, first.

And she knew her freedom was going to be discovered eventually, so she also set about constructing a plan to survive.