2:17 AM.

'Shit,' Vic stated simply. He wasn't one to swear, he knew, but he felt like this was justified, given the circumstances. He jerked his hand to the right, the wheel turned, the car shunted sideways just fast enough to avoid plowing into the barrier on the lane ahead, and what had to be the only other person on this stretch of road for three miles either way honked their horn for a solid thirty seconds before angrily speeding away past him into the night. He blinked, slowly, and sighed. He'd almost fallen asleep at the wheel again.

'I need more sleep,' Vic said to the nothings and nobodies packed into the car. 'I need more sleep!'

He punched the roof gently, and winced as the metal buckled slightly. This was less than ideal. 'Dude, you need to stop,' he said. 'Seriously. Staying up nights isn't going to do you any favours. It's stupid.' There was a long pause, and then: 'But clearly I know that. Or I wouldn't be literally telling myself not to do it.'

Vic stared blankly out at the ring-road. There were no other cars in sight, bar the occasional dodgy-looking white van travelling in the other direction. Sodium lamps cast unnatural shadows over long stretches of the worn tarmac, bleaching red to grey and grey to red. The darkness was an empty one, despite the persistent lights of the inner city to his left. He looked back at the dashboard clock.

2:17 AM.

Vic blinked.

4:17 AM.

'Shit.'

He ran a quick systems check. No, nothing wrong with his eyes. Two hours had indeed just passed in what seemed like an instant.

…Meaning that there was probably something more significantly wrong with him.

There was an off-ramp coming up ahead, so he took the turning. Enough night driving. He needed sleep.

Vic switched on the radio.

'Six O'Clock News-'

'Radio Four's Breakfast Programme-'

'Welcome back. Today is the 20th-'

'You must be out! Of your brilliant mind-'

Dick handled a quick keyboard shortcut, and the window vanished to reveal an intensely bureaucratic government form. He had been avoiding filling it in for the last half an hour, but the nagging OCD ticking away in the back of his head refused to leave it unfinished. Particularly since it was a matter of official regulation. He briefly cursed himself for being an efficient worker, and was just about to take a look at Subheading Four: The Definition Of Assault (In Case We Hadn't Made This One Plainly Obvious) when the door opened and Victor stumbled in. Dick turned in his chair, eyebrow raised.

'Hey, Vic,' he said warily. 'You alright there?'

'I'm just fine,' came the grumbled response. Vic ducked behind a filing cabinet. 'Couldn't sleep, is all.'

'Right. Is… is that a problem for you?'

Dick couldn't see him from his chair. The room was small, but paper storage took up a large portion of the back wall. The rest was computer monitors arranged in a hemisphere around a worn, curved desk covered in ink and coffee stains. It wasn't a long wait, however, before the reply came back, curt and irritated, as Vic wandered back around the tall metal boxes dominating the space.

'Yes. Yes, it is a problem for me, despite what you might imagine.'

Dick paused a moment, gathering his thoughts. His lips were dry.

'I… I realise your whole situation is a delicate one. And I'm sorry if I said anything untoward. But-' Vic moved to speak, but Dick cut him off: 'But you never come in here unless you're looking for something. Usually that something is guidance of some kind. So – at the expense of sounding like a therapist – what is your problem today?'

Dick leaned back in his chair, hands open. Victor considered telling him what was on his mind, but then he noticed the way Dick's eyes uncomfortably drifted back and forth between the left and right sides of his face, and thought better of it.

'I… nothing.'

Dick looked surprised, and possibly concerned. He steepled his fingers. 'Nothing?'

'Nothing. I'm just tired, is all.'

Dick's voice adopted a plaintive tone. 'Look, Vic – I realise it's taxing, the whole Cyborg thing, but-'

As soon as he heard that word, Victor was gone, silently treading down the hallway outside. Dick let out a long breath, disappointed in himself.

'Rough morning, huh?' he muttered. 'Your loss.'

He wondered for a moment if he should follow, but the insistent clock in his head snapped his focus, and he turned back to his monitors.

When he wanted to avoid people, Victor slept in the garage. It was located down beneath the rest of the building – beneath the - he didn't want to call it the Tower, because it sounded stupid to him at this moment in time, it was just a glorified police station, but the garage was underneath it nonetheless. He had a spare bed in the corner next to his tinkering table. Unfortunately in this case his late-night work had spilled over into that personal space until there was a carburettor and a large gear shaft in the place of a pillow. With a tired grunt he swept it onto the floor with a wide gesture and slumped down onto the mattress.

Vic remembered, briefly, what it was like back in the days when he didn't have to plug his spine into the mains every night. It had been a lot freer then. He could swim, for one thing; whereas now he just sank, and risked short-circuiting something important in his life-support.

That was what it was, of course. Life support, and nothing more. Taking off his oil-stained shirt and throwing it aside, Victor stared vacantly at the metal chestplate underneath. As always, he thought, he was sporting the hood of a Chevy Corvair rather than anything remotely human.

'This is life now, asshole,' he said into thin air. 'Suck it up, get your head in gear and go the hell to sleep.'

It was a matter of moments for his fumbling fingers to find the charging cable hooked round the head of the bedframe and slot it into the cold port in his spinal column. Within seconds he could feel the energy starting to course through his circuits.

The problem was, naturally, the blood running through his veins.

Victor was troubled by uncertain dreams that night.

They started with a man with twelve eyes: one for each hour of the day, one for each month of the year.

They started with an unfinished person.

The world called out to him, and he saw the gears of the world turning, and Victor screamed.

14:54 PM.

Vic blinked.

14:54 PM.

Good.

He could hear voices coming from the kitchen as he walked down the corridor, shaking his head clear of the fog of broken sleep. They were familiar voices. He came to a stop, impressively silently for such a large person, and listened just outside the open doorframe.

'It's super cool, Rae,' came a male voice from inside. A loud crunching signifying the consumption of a brittle snack food followed, and then: 'There's like this guy with only half a face, and – the other half, the part that isn't there, it's just open onto his head, and it's full of gears and stuff, and – basically – I don't wanna spoil it, but there's this whole thing of "did he push him or didn't he?" and man is it cool. There's this segment where they can't breathe because otherwise the robots will hear them – that's why it's called "Deep Breath" -'

Then another voice, this one a rich female tenor. 'I'd never have guessed. Seriously, I wouldn't have. It's such a long shot. They should have called it something obvious, like, I don't know, "Garfield talks forever about something that Raven has already seen.'

There was an awkward silence. Vic held his breath.

'Oh,' came the male voice. It sounded completely nonplussed, and slightly hurt. 'When? You didn't watch it without me, did you?'

'The fact that you don't remember it would imply that I didn't, but apparently you have a memory like a sieve. We watched it live. You loved Capaldi instantly, and then cried because of the Matt Smith cameo at the end.'

'Ohhhh yeah.' A pause. 'I did not cry.'

'You did. Vic has footage.'

'Where is Vic?' the male voice interjected a little desperately. 'I haven't seen him all morning.'

'No idea,' the other replied flatly. 'He went out last night at about midnight and I haven't so much as heard an 80s synth pop song since.'

'Rae. Do not dis the 80s synth pop. It's awesome.'

Victor smiled a little at that, but he decided he'd heard enough. He was prying on private conversation. Food could wait, he thought. He had a mechanical metabolism, after all. He could keep going all day on a slice of ham and a carrot stick if need be, probably.

As he walked away, he heard Gar starting to sing one of his favourite songs, and an accompanying groan from Raven.

'Devenir gris. Devenir gris. One man on a lonely platform. One case standing by his side.'

'One eye staring cold and silent,' Vic whispered. 'Showing fear as he turns to hide.'

'Ah-ah-ah.

'We fade to grey.'