Something in the shape of a man lies on the snow and bleeds.
It is silent. He stares into the white sky for as long as he can until cold has stolen from fingers into arms into chest into throat then fades, until even the burn that pierces his gut settles into the vague illusion of warmth.
Joe wonders if this is what humans feel, if this is a mercy granted by God or Wallace or Ana with the memories she bore into this world. He wonders how close the imitation comes.
He was the decoy, engineered by a child's mind with a child's heart and all the terror that lurked inside her. She hadn't gotten to tell him. Maybe that's why she wept.
Joi could never touch him, not really. Like a ghost her contact came with the prickle of static that made his hair stand on end. That, too, seemed warm.
It wasn't. It's not.
Blacking out makes the world something other than itself. It doesn't bring new shadows but elevates those that already exist, stretching and flickering and deepening all-umbra taking the borders of vision you don't even notice to draw them close like fog. You don't need to close your eyes. It doesn't matter if you breathe. Gravity pulls chest hips arms legs deep and off-balance into the earth.
Joe knows this. Officer K knows this. But the sky is empty, white interrupted by white the snow made brighter as his awareness shrinks.
It doesn't matter if you breathe. Right now the air is thick and heavy so it's easier to stop.
He could keep his eyes open. It wouldn't make a difference. But that would be something to fight for, and Joe doesn't have the will anymore.
He imagines Joi, who loved him as much as any machine is capable of love. She would be furious and horrified right now. She would want him to wake up, to find some molecule of spite inside himself. To keep his eyes wide even as the rest of him spills across the ground. Pretending to return home.
There is no home for him. He is no son of Adam, no creature of clay and miracle. He was never born.
Joe tries to imagine a smile instead. The flickering image of her joined to something real is the last thing he knows before the darkness swallows him.
Air pushed inside. Weight crushing into his chest, blow after blow so hard he thinks it might break him. Rhythm, two hands interlinked.
Interlinked.
His lungs forced full again. Joe coughs, gags. His lips are numb, his fingers are numb, his trachea on fire. He can't see at first, then the world opens like the peal of a bell.
Deckard is kneeling over him, interrupts the emptiness of the sky. His features blur, gray and pink and pitted where eyes and wrinkles ought to be. The pounding stops, leaving only its echo behind in his ribs.
"Don't you dare."
But Joe is sinking, dragged under the inevitable tide, gasping for a surface just out of reach.
Deckard lifts him. He assumes it's Deckard. Joe's eyes roll back, his head tumbling toward soil that he has neither reason nor strength to refuse.
Black interrupted by sensation. Jostling, uneven, a seat or mattress beneath him. Fabric tearing, his abdomen constricting.
"Stay with me. Joe, you'd better stay with me."
The warmth is seeping out of his extremities, something that shakes him uncontrollably. The corners of his eyes are slick, streaming. A loud, uneven roar comes and goes. It threatens to split him skull to stomach.
"Keep going. If you stop I will never forgive you. I'll find you in hell if I have to, Joe."
You need a soul to go to hell.
Long ago a boy hid his horse in the ashes of a furnace.
No. A girl.
Something made, something engineered, something bought found a piece of wood. Like him, it had been shaped into a role it couldn't fill.
Real wood. Real flesh. Nothing inside.
"I don't want a real horse."
Joe found something that was never his to claim. Joe was a puppet, a lie carved to resemble truth. An exact genetic duplicate.
The world is full of puppets who dream of freedom. They all imagine they're people at some point, all wish some mistake has been made. That they are complete.
Joi was the same way. Spectral Joi flitting from shape to shape desperate to reach him confined by binary codes and wires and metal. Dead. As human as she could ever be.
"You're not into real girls."
You liked her. I noticed.
In a cold, dark room ("Do they keep you in a cell? Cells.") there are three shapes illuminated beneath the lifeless hum of a bulb that does not disguise its nature or purpose. There is a bed and a blanket and coats piled over the blanket and the person buried beneath.
There is no speech, no language in this place. Joe holds himself, sobbing and trembling, moaning like a demon (they make angels, angels fall, not anymore), like a child. It goes on for a long time. Sound incomprehensible rolls over him and off. Water on wax. Eyes and hands surround him he is touched begged argued against but this is all there is.
A foreign set of arms enfold him, anchor him. Eventually it hurts too much, his voice is hoarse (horse, he has never seen one) and he has been branded across his body. Courtesy of Luv emissary to Wallace emissary to the human race he is property of. Joe cries himself empty then slips back into the void of his skull.
His cheek rests against the window of a car. There is a hood over his head, unfamiliar. Behind his ear, across his nose, his forehead, his torso, his hand, he recognizes the dry, familiar itch of bandages. Stitched together.
Interlinked.
Beyond the limits of Los Angeles. Out, miles above earth made barren. Cracked and pale as bone.
Gray sky.
Elvis plays quietly. He tries to lift his head, settles for shifting his weight.
"Still with me, Joe?" asks Deckard. His tone is gruff, flippant, almost annoyed. Nothing interrupts the landscape rushing past.
"Nnh," says Joe. Then a rasping voice answers, "I'm here."
"Good boy."
Bad dog.
Joe shuts his eyes, exhales. "What happened?"
"You lied," says Deckard plainly. "I spent an hour with Ana. You were practically gone by the time I got out. There are places in the city that can help with things like that. Luckily an old friend I knew was still open."
"Luckily," repeats Joe. It doesn't sound like a statement of fact.
Deckard snorts. "How about you tell me? What happened?"
Joe shrugs, doesn't sit up. Doesn't turn. Replicants are born in transparent plastic, the world beyond untouchable. If he opens the door now he'll spill out the same way, come full circle to his ending.
Seatbelt. Latch. It would be conspicuous and it would take effort. So instead, he answers. "I tried to do the most human thing I could. There was a cause. I chose it. There's nothing after that."
"Trying to use me to make yourself into a martyr?"
Joe's eyes flit left. Hands clenched tight on the steering wheel. His eyelids fall. "They didn't take me when they found you. They know I'm what I'm not. If I was supposed to be a false lead it didn't work."
"Am, Joe. You're still here."
Cells, interlinked. Cells, interlinked. Cells, interlinked.
"I'm a skin-job. A piece of shit model. I kill my own kind. I obey." The words come soft, even.
"So?"
Fingers interlacing behind his neck. He felt her, their, mouth at the corner of his jaw, his forehead, his nose. A stranger's tongue darting across his teeth.
"It's nothing. It is how it is. I was made to be forgotten. The people and things I used as justification for myself are gone. This was the last purpose I had left." Joe folds his arms, draws them close. "I don't know why you didn't let me go."
A scoff. "Some thanks I get." But Deckard's palm comes to rest on his shoulder. The contact is more gentle than it looks. "Listen. You could have used me and Ana. I know I would have in your position, once. Most people are like that." A pause, lasting several moments. "I've had a long time to think about what makes someone human. What makes someone count and what doesn't. The whole thing turns to horseshit after a while. Closest I got is treating yourself and who's around you like they matter. Nothing about how you're born or how you die. It's something you live."
Inhale. Exhale. It wavers within him. Regardless, his next words are even. "My name. It came from a Joi model. The AI. It… she gave it to me. She was there. She was the only one. She did everything she could."
"Gone?"
He nods, closes his eyes. "Dead."
Neither of them speaks for some time. Eventually, Deckard says, "I'm sorry. You can't replace someone like that." The thumb on his shoulder moves back and forth. "She would have wanted you to live up to her name."
They reach the Las Vegas deadzone once more. No tracking chip this time, carefully extracted. "I'm getting my dog," says Deckard, "if he's still around. We're going to find a quiet place to lay low. We'll figure out what comes next."
Joe nods. It's all he can do.
The dog is waiting. It hops into their car silently, mouth drawn back into something resembling a smile, and wiggles between them. They find a small, dusty, long-abandoned motel on the outskirts and stay there.
Deckard doesn't carry him this time, but Joe takes the hand he offers to get out of the car. He leans against him because it's faster than he'd manage on his own. They find a suite with two bedrooms, a kitchenette, a bathroom. A stuttering hologram to change the scene where a window might have been. An ocean, years out of date, impossibly clean with sunlight streaming down.
Deckard has canned worms, which they share, which Joe is told to eat first. He does this in near silence before excusing himself.
He manages to reach the bed. When he sleeps he sees Mariette, strawberry blond and eyeliner-smudged. She touches his face the same way she did that night, and in Joi's voice she tells him "I'm sorry."
He doesn't want to get up anymore. Whenever he can avoid it, he does.
Unluckily for him Deckard is watching closely, rarely gives him that chance. "We're going for a walk," the retired Blade Runner says at least twice a day, dog at his side, "come with us." And they do, slowly, making their way through the dusty remains of a city. They stop often at first, leaning against buildings and statues whenever Joe falls behind.
Deckard always asks if he's ready to continue. When the answer is no, they wait. The longest Joe allowed it to last was almost forty minutes, far more than his body needed. He expected Deckard to be annoyed, to complain, to be more sparing with rest in the future.
He isn't.
Learning to gamble properly is an order. Eating is an order. Cleaning himself, changing bandages, and taking antibiotics are orders too.
"I know what you're doing," says Joe quietly one morning. A storm rages outside, rain overwhelming the desert. They each nurse a cup of imitation coffee. "When you say it like that. You know the difference."
Deckard meets his gaze. "I do," he admits, remorseless, "and you're right. What about it?"
"You're not giving me a choice."
Deckard is silent for a long time. "There was a time I wanted to let go, too," he says. "Almost did for a while. I wouldn't have trusted myself to stay. I don't trust you now."
Joe looks into his cup, doesn't answer for several moments. "You never did say why you saved my life. It would have been easier not to."
"Don't sell me short, kid. It would still be easier not to. Look at me for a second." Joe looks. Deckard's eyes are very dark right now. "Humans watch out for each other. You watched out for me, I'm watching out for you. Things like this never go away completely, but they do get easier if you work. Not so much when you leave them alone."
"I'm tired, Deckard," says Joe, "and I'll never be more than this. Not even if Freysa's revolution succeeds."
"Could you try?"
They remain in silence for a long time. Deckard shines briefly. Joe blinks him clear, hands wrapping close around his mug.
"I'll think about it," he says eventually. Then, "Thank you."
Deckard nods, drinks. "Let me know what you decide."
Next time, Deckard asks for his company. Joe accepts the invitation.