It seemed that it took a small army of robots to get Bo into some sort of semblance of cleanliness. As the masculine robot led her up the stairs, it was joined by the chirrupy one from before, and two others. They walked her down the long gallery at the top of the stairs on the second floor, where they took a left into a small hallway where bedroom doors clustered. They chose the door at the very end of the hall, and opened it with a flash of a yellow light on a sensor. The lock clicked out of place, and the masculine robot dragged her through.

Before she could get much more than a cursory glance at the dark blue wallpaper and crisp white covers on the massive bed, the robots led her to a tiled bathroom attached to the room. She blinked in surprise at the sterility of it all, briefly remembering the drafty and dust-filled outhouses they used back at the camp. It felt almost shameful to have used a plank of wood placed over a hole now that she was surrounded by a strangely beautiful porcelain toilet, a sink that was big enough to give a small child a bath, and a grand mirror that took up an entire wall.

Behind her was the bath with the chirrupy robot drawing the water. Bo waited to one side, her wrist still clamped by her robotic guard, until the water reached a certain level and the taps were turned off. The robot dumped a packet of scented salts in and swished them around, staining the water pink and filling the room with the smell of some sort of flower. Bo snarled at this. It seemed like an order coming from the Beast. She was to smell like a doll. It was yet another thing she couldn't control.

The chirrupy robot turned to her, and Bo could swear it looked expectant even though it had no features beyond the circular lens in its middle. "Miss, please step into the bath."

Bo frowned. "Miss?"

"Do you have a form of address you would rather we use? If you tell me, my programming will spread the information to all the Service-Matons."

"Bo is fine," Bo said.

"You may call me Madame," the chirrupy robot said. It rotated to indicate a small robot by its side. "This is Fil. Dent and Chan stand behind you." Bo turned to see the masculine sounding robot and one that was a bit taller than the others.

"Oh," Bo said, eyeing the new robots. "How many of you are there?"

Madame seemed to think on this for a moment, her light flashing yellow, before she replied. "Perhaps twenty in service at the moment."

Bo cringed inwardly. That amount of robots would make it hard to escape without being spotted. She'd have to come up with a real plan to get away, and not count on just running once her leg was healed.

"I do not wish to hurry you," Dent, the brown-striped one, said as he hovered forward. "However, we received orders that you be cleaned. We must fulfill these before we can take on other tasks."

"I think we can probably just skip this one, right? Go do whatever else it is you need to do."

The robots didn't move at first, as if they couldn't understand what she said. But when they saw she was making no moves toward getting into the bath, they slowly came to life. Dent's light flashed red, and suddenly all them were flashing around her.

"Please comply," Dent said, his voice hard and businesslike. "We do not wish to use force."

Bo balked. "I don't need a bath that bad."

She hadn't even finished speaking before Dent and Chan surged forward, clutching her in their metal clamps once again. Bo snarled and fought against them as they dragged her toward the bath.

Madame gripped the edge of Bo's shirt and crimson jacket, her anti-grav whirring into life as she prepared to zoom up and lift the clothing over Bo's head. Bo yelped, struggling to keep her shirt down while still being restrained. Madame beeped in frustration, her light flashing yellow and then red. Bo's eyebrows drew together as she stared into the robot's circular lens. She hadn't thought of it until now, but it was probably extremely easy for the Beast to record everything his robotic servants saw. Including Bo and this bathroom. Her skin crawled at the thought and she moved her arms as close to her body as she could manage.

"Stop! I'm not getting in with you guys hovering around," she shouted, putting all her weight into her heels so that the robots' anti-gravs had to work overtime.

"Perhaps we should leave the human to finish the job on her own," the tall robot, Chan said. "The Master will not mind how the human is washed."

Madame's light flashed green, and Dent and Chan released their hold. "True, Chan." The green light washed over Bo. "Make sure to actually bathe, or else we will be forced to wash you ourselves."

With that, the four robots slowly floated their way out of the bathroom. Bo pushed them over the last bit of the threshold, and then slammed the bathroom door shut. Thankfully, a physical lock was on the handle and she quickly flipped it. 

Turning back to the room, she scanned for anything that looked like a camera, but could see nothing obvious in the marble and woodwork. No doubt, if the Beast really wanted to spy on her, she wouldn't be able to spot a hidden camera behind a pinhole. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, but she had no choice but to climb into the water. If she didn't do it now, the robots would make her.

Stealing herself, she peeled off her clothes, wincing in pain as she struggled to free her leg without jostling the injured knee. She piled them in a heap on the floor next to the tub, and took a tentative step into the pink-tinged water. The first and immediate sensation was a soothing cool wrapping around her and soothing her injured knee. The smell of flowers stirred in the air, and when she dunked her head under the surface to wet her hair, she came up with it firmly making residence in her nose. The smell was so strange that Bo wasn't sure she liked it, being more used to motor oil and dust.

At any rate, the temperature of the water was more perplexing than the flowery scent. How in heaven's name had the Beast managed to get cold water? And so pure and clean, at that. If the bath salts hadn't been added, she would have been able to drink from the bath. There must have been some insanely complex filtration and cooling system set up somewhere. The technology he must have to keep this place looking like it did... Bo shook her head at the vastness of it.

The robots had supplied her with all sorts of soaps and shampoos, and she only felt slightly guilty as she slathered them in her hair and over her skin. She didn't want to use anything of the Beast's, but when she saw the orange finally lift from her skin and cloud the water she couldn't help but be grateful for the soap. Back at the camp, they had to use the cheap soap from peddlers selling the overstock from the Terra Preservation army, and wash it off with the miniscule amount of water they could spare for cleansing. This was the first time Bo could see her skin clearly in years, and the first time her hair was slick and smooth, with no grit or grease.

She took a few moments to just soak, close her eyes and pretend she wasn't locked in an ornate bathroom with the last alien on earth lurking somewhere in the house beyond. But the thought of the Beast wouldn't let her rest for long. She felt too vulnerable in the tub, naked and unarmed. She grabbed a towel and tied it around herself while she stepped out of the bath. She dug out her pistols from the pile of her clothes, and nudged them with her foot underneath the tub just in case the robots had some way of barging in. Then, she grabbed her clothes and dumped them into the leftover bathwater to scrub clean.

They were by far dirtier than she was, and the water soon turned a dark brown and the smell of the flowers disappeared. She wasn't even sure when the last time she had washed her clothes was, and she'd been wearing a very limited wardrobe for the past five years. Which meant the pants, shirt, undergarments she now wrung out over the bathtub were practically worn through and held together with patches. Only her jacket was still in good repair, since it was made of sturdy material, but it was now spotted with blood. Not exactly the kind of uniform a servant in a grand house like this was supposed to wear, but then again she would never think of herself as a servant.

After doing her best to wring out her clothes, she slipped them back on and used her towel to try and absorb the rest of the moisture. She was damp and uncomfortable, but it was better than walking around in a towel for hours. One of her pants legs hung gaping open, revealing the wound that had begun to bleed again after the bath. Bo bared her teeth as she looked down at her kneecap and the damage the tumble from the hopper had done.

When she opened the bathroom doors, the robots were waiting for her exactly where she'd last seen them. The tall robot, the one named Chan, hovered closer, its shiny white metal body catching the light from an electric chandelier that hung in the middle of the room.