Override 0

by Splickedylit

"Override 0," says the Duke lazily. "...stand by for orders." / "Acknowledged," Chuck says, quiet and flat and empty. "Standing by." - ((gen: cyborg!Chuck))

1. I: Registration Inquiry

Length: 40,000 words overall

Characters/Pairings: Gen, but if you want to read it as pre-polyburners or Chuck/everybody I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong haha

Warnings: Nonconsensual surgery/body-mods, Kane Co. being completely unethical, mind-control (of a sort), blood/severe injury. But hey, there's a happy ending. TuT

Note: Yet another one of my fics that's illustrated on AO3. Even if you do your reading over here, I strongly encourage you to check it out over there as well-I'm very proud of my illustrations! :D Enjoy.

---

Chuck maintains stubbornly for weeks after the fight that if Mike had just looked, he wouldn't have picked up a call from the Duke, and if Mike hadn't picked up a call from the Duke the whole mess wouldn't have ever gotten started, and if it had never gotten started Chuck would never have punched anybody.

But it's a lazy Saturday night, Mike is just on that edge of twitchy energy-high he gets when he's been bored for too long, and when a call comes in he doesn't bother to look and see who it is.

"Mr. Chilton!"

Mike jerks back as the Duke's face blooms into existence in front of him, larger than life on his comm screen. Around the room the other Burners look up sharply, instantly on guard. Mike, whose eye is still puffy from Red's beatings and who has some blame of his own to pass around, narrows his eyes and crosses his arms, glaring up at the screen.

"Duke."

"Time for the Burners to pay me a visit," The Duke says, with barely-concealed distaste. "Drive your little rolling scrap-heap on over to my joint, Chilton."

"We're busy," says Mike shortly. He's been bristling for action for days now, but the last thing any of them want to take the edge off Mike's jumpiness is a run-in with the Duke. That lesson's been learned.

"I don't need all of you running around my mansion," the Duke says dismissively, and points at the screen with the head of his cane. "I got one special somebody in mind. I wanna talk to your friend."

"My…friend?"

"The screaming one." The Duke says, and frowns when Mike just stares at him, apparently mistaking Mike's immediate unhappy tension for incomprehension. "—the one with the legs. Y'know, the one who's surprisingly not awful at racing?"

Chuck, who has been watching this exchange with increasing confusion, blinks and huddles down in his chair a little like the Duke might turn around and look right at him.

"'The one with the legs'?" Dutch mutters.

"You want…to talk to Chuck?"

"Sure," says the Duke. "Blondie. Whatever his name is. Send him. Alone."

"Why should I?"

"Because I have something important to talk to him about," says the Duke, and leans back in his chair. "And if I don't tell him, I don't tell nobody. Besides, he likes me. I did him a favor."

The Burners share a long look. Dutch is shaking his head—Chuck is just sitting and staring, mouth hanging open. Texas is nodding, and Julie glances at Chuck for a response and then nods as well, mouth twisting up in a well what are you gonna do kind of grimace.

"…when."

"Mm, I'm a busy man. How about…now."

A muscle twitches in Mike's jaw as he grinds his teeth. "Fine," he says, and there's a hint of a growl in his voice. "We'll be there."

"It's a date."

The Duke flickers out, ending the call. Slowly, everybody in the room turns to look at Chuck.

"Is this cool?" Mike asks, and "—what favor?" Texas says, indignantly, and "Man, what if it's a trap?" Dutch is saying, and "We can't afford to just turn him down," Julie points out.

"Ahhhh," says Chuck very quietly. "Ahah. Uh. Well. You already said I'd—I guess I'll just kind of…" he pushes himself up, takes a deep breath and lets it out, then starts slowly walking toward the garage. "…let's go, Mike."

The drive over is tense. Mike keeps trying to plan out some kind of strategy, an exit plan, an emergency backup—Chuck, who was already nervous enough about the whole mess without Mike sitting there stressing and driving like an even crazier person than normal because he's not paying attention, mostly contributes yelling and incoherent noises.

Mike gets slower as they get closer, like he's reluctant to actually arrive, but in Mutt it's not a long drive and it hardly seems like any time at all before she's pulling up in front of the Duke's mansion, grumbling as Mike puts her in park and Chuck reluctantly unfolds himself from his seat out into the cool evening air. The Duke's Number Two is waiting for them on the steps, casting a long, sharp shadow, all legs and vivid red hair. She looks at them like they're something off the bottom of one of her boots for a second, and then pops a bubble.

"You're late," she says.

Mike doesn't bother to answer that—he beckons Chuck closer instead, grabs him by the arm and pulls him in for a rough, one-armed hug. "Tell me if you need me to come get you," he says firmly as soon as he lets go, and glances up at the Duke's mansion with a tight frown on his face. "As soon as you feel like something's going down, tell me. Okay? If you don't call for me to get you in the next half hour I'm gonna assume something's wrong and we're gonna come get you. So. Y'know, just…call me, dude."

"You got it."

"The Duke insists you stay at the entrance," says Number Two flatly. Mike glares at her, then looks back at Chuck and sighs through his nose.

"…yeah, okay," he says. "You can handle this. You're gonna be fine."

"Sure."

The sight of Mutt retreating down the Duke's long, winding drive still makes Chuck want to go sprinting after it. Instead, he turns around and looks up at the mansion towering over him. After the dimness of Motorcity at night and Mutt's dark, close interior, it's almost blinding.

"He's expectin' you," says Number Two, and does a sharp about-face, stalking off toward the mansion. Chuck stares after her for a second, then swallows hard and jogs after her. Up the stairs, through the doors, into the familiar huge, echoing room full of perfectly-polished cars. The paintings of the Duke grinning down from every surface haven't stopped being ridiculous, but when he's by himself they're kind of creepy too, and Number Two holds out a hand sharply to stop him in his tracks and then strides up the stairs and stands at attention next to the huge chair, leaving Chuck alone and feeling very small in the vast space of the room.

The Duke is already there, in his throne with some kind of video playing on his screen—when Number Two clears her throat he clicks his fingers and drops the screen, then grins at the sight of Chuck standing there uncomfortably.

"Ah," he says, and Chuck shudders a little bit at the tone of his voice. "There he is."

"Mike says you asked for me."

The Duke nods, although whether he's agreeing or just enjoying the music in his head is anybody's guess. "I got a bone to pick with you," he says, and somehow manages to go from lounging across his throne to standing up without using his arms. Chuck takes a few hasty steps back as the Duke advances down the steps, tapping his cane on one shoulder. "Listen, kiddo—Chuckles, or whatever your name is—"

"My name's Chuck," Chuck interjects.

"Mmhm, I hear you," says the Duke, and waves a hand. "—now how about you stop talking. Anyway. I went digging on you and your little gang. You'd be amazed how much the big man upstairs just—throws out for people to pick up. Including…" he pulls up a screen; white and blue Kane Co. files flicker across it, and he taps one indolently with the tip of his cane. "…things that used to be marked classified."

Chuck's face flickers up on the screen; younger, rounder, wider-eyed. The rest of the file is mostly incomprehensible, garbled symbols, but some of the words are still legible. Chuck's face pales.

"Look," he says, and swallows hard. "—I dunno what…what you think you found, but—"

"Imagine how surprised I was when you were the one I dug up dirt on! It wasn't hard, if you know where to look it's all there."

"Listen—"

"I'll admit, you're convincing." The Duke clicks his tongue, considering. "…do the rest of your Burner buddies know you're a fake?"

Chuck's mouth drops open. He sputters for a second, then manages, "—I'm—what?"

"You're not human." The Duke's hand whips out with startling speed and grabs one of Chuck's thin wrists, yanking him closer as he yelps and tries to pull away. "You're a machine. I do love a good machine, but I never tried makin' one that thought it was a real boy."

"No!" Chuck's face is very, very pale. "I—I'm not a—"

"Command," says the Duke, almost lazily. "Override, code 0; don't lie to me."

Chuck spasms, a startled, full-body jolt; his free hand snaps up to his head, and the Duke catches that one too.

"They make good fakes up there in Deluxe," he says, and presses a thumb hard at the inside of one wrist. Chuck yelps in pain. "—pain sensors now?! Ow! That's some smooth machinery."

His hand slides up Chuck's arm on the word smooth. Chuck shudders.

"Seriously, let go!" He yanks on his arm—the Duke lets one of his wrists go, grinning, but doesn't let him pull the other one away.

"So? Who owns you?"

Chuck twitches all over—the Duke leans forward in anticipation, grinning.

"I don't have an owner!" The words come out suddenly loud and sharp and bitter. "Not down here!"

"Oh, fine. Who are you registered to?" The Duke clicks his tongue. "Command! Override 0; registration inquiry."

The fight goes out of Chuck's body. "Registration inquiry acknowledged," he says, sudden and flat, and the Duke grins like a predator sighting prey. "Registered—2—September—2318. Age: 18. Combat designation failed. Designated engineering unit prototype, '[unknown], "Chuck"'."

"And?"

"Registration holder…" Chuck grits his teeth for a second, as if he's fighting the words, and then chokes out, "…Kane, Abraham. Transferred to Kapulsky, Julie, 9/3/2318. Transferred to Chilton, Mikhail, 9/5/2318."

"Chilton owns you?!" The Duke whoops with wild laughter—Chuck flushes blotchy red and pulls his hand away, drawing tight in on himself. "That explains so much! And he took you right out from under that loudmouth's nose?! Cllllassy!" The last word is a ringing shout—Chuck flinches, hunted and humiliated.

"He doesn't know!"

The Duke freezes in mid-pose. Slowly, one leg still raised at an improbable angle, he swivels his head to stare over the top of his sunglasses.

"…what."

"Mike—doesn't know." Chuck hunches his shoulders, talking fast and quiet and unwilling. "He didn't know he was approving the registration transfer, he doesn't know, he's not my—"

"Doesn't know he…owns you." The Duke raises his eyebrows. "…well, he sure acts like it."

Chuck's hands tighten into shaking fists at his sides. "Mike's not—"

"Doesn't know he can override your free-will simulator if he knows the magic words?"

"He wouldn't—"

"Doesn't know you're not human?"

"I am human!"

"Oh please." The Duke snorts. "Stop fooling around. I have to admit I'm impressed you're tryin' so hard, but if you figure—"

"I'm not a—a robot!"

"Android." The Duke shrugs. "Whatever. Listen up now—"

"Cyborg," Chuck snaps. The Duke raises his eyebrows, amused. "Okay?! I'm a human, I was born a human, they didn't change that!"

"Oh yeah?" The Duke swivels, intrigued and skeptical, thinking it over, then takes a long-legged stride back towards Chuck, closing the gap. "Do tell. Because it sounds to me like you're—" in a flash he has an arm around Chuck's shoulders, pulling him close and throwing a hand out in front of them both. "~~deep in deni-i-allll~yeah!"

"It was all…implants and surgeries." The words slow as the anger behind them fades, reluctant now, dragged out of him. Chuck closes his mouth, fighting, and then takes a deep breath and finishes, "—I was a prototype but they screwed it up. The mental load was too much, they couldn't calibrate the senses down—the anxiety, the…panic attacks—"

"I'm guessing Kane didn't want his cyborg soldier to sit in a lab all day and scream like a lady whenever he moved faster than running speed," the Duke says, a little viciously, and Chuck winces. "Well. What a disappointment you must have been. How much of your brain did they—" his fingers wiggle in the air. "—work their magic on?"

"49.3 percent," Chuck says immediately, and then jerks and shakes his head sharply like he's trying to clear it. "But-"

"Mmhm. And how much of your…" the glasses flash as the Duke glances up and down. "…body?"

Chuck goes scarlet and shuts his mouth sharply. The Duke sighs. "Oh, come on, are we going to do this little song and dance every time, Chuckles? I can call you that I assume? Command—!"

"No!"

The Duke stops in mid-shout, frowning at the interruption. Chuck shrinks back and crosses his arms, huddling in on himself.

"Just—please, just stop, okay?" He sounds miserable. "…87.9. 88 percent. Happy now?"

"Really." The Duke's eyebrows rise over his glasses. "What parts?"

"That's—th-that's not—"

"Don't make me override you, baby." The Duke's smile could be better described as a leer. Chuck jerks back with affronted surprise, one round eye briefly visible under his hair. "How much of you is still you?"

"That's…that's none of your…" he starts, shaky but tight with something like anger. "Why do you care?"

"I don't think you're in much of a position to ask, do you?" The Duke takes a step forward, spinning his cane slowly from hand to hand. "Answer. The question."

"They took my arms and legs and spine and most of my organs," Chuck says, fast and loud and all in one breath. "—okay?! And one of my eyes, and half of my brain, but I'm not—" his voice cracks. He ducks his head and takes a sharp, deep breath, but his voice is still shaking when he finishes, "…I'm not a robot. F—" he catches himself on the curse, chewing his tongue, blotchy, humiliated red over ashy white. "Screw you."

"Aw, don't be like that." The Duke sounds downright cheerful now that his point is proven. "Not like I got any reason to tell anybody."

The unspoken message is clear. Yet. Chuck shudders just a little.

"You've already got blackmail on me," he says sullenly. "Why do you even bother?"

"You can never have too much blackmail, baby," says the Duke brightly. "Actually—don't call it blackmail, never liked the sound of that word. Call it an ongoing arrangement."

"I'm not calling it that."

"That was all I wanted to talk to you about, anyway." The Duke continues, obviously not listening. "Wanted to see this for myself. And you did not disappoint."

"Can I go now?"

"Well it's been a while since you checked in with your registration holder," says the Duke, and grins when that makes Chuck's teeth grit. "The last thing I want is Chilton busting in here with his stupid little stick out, waving that thing around near my ladies. Surprised he lets you out of his sight, to be honest."

"Bye," says Chuck, very forcefully, and turns to the door. "Asshole."

"He's smart though," the Duke calls after him, as he reaches out for the door. "…he doesn't wanna leave me alone with stuff that belongs to him!"

Chuck jerks to a halt in mid-stride, hands curling into fists at his sides, shoulders tensing in sudden fury. For a minute, it looks like he's going to turn back—then he puts his head down and keeps going, walking fast and angry, slamming the door on the way out.

The air outside is cold and damp, full of late-night Motorcity fog. Chuck takes a couple of steps out onto the courtyard in the front of the Duke's mansion, throwing out a long, dark shadow in front of him, and stops, taking deep breaths.

What a disappointment you must've been.

For a second he almost turns around to march back in and feed the Duke his own stupid cane. Then self-preservation catches up with him and he stops, gritting his teeth on the bitter burn of anger at the back of his throat. Because he knows the smart option is just to deal with it, because Mike told him to call instead of doing anything stupid, because he's supposed to be the smart one. He rakes a hand through his hair, groans long and pained through his teeth and then turns away again and paces away across the yard in fast, vicious strides, hissing curses under his breath.

There's nobody around, nobody watching when he stops, takes a couple of deep breaths and then slumps down on the steps of the mansion, folding his arms over his knees and dropping his head into his arms. For a second he considers calling Mike and just getting out—but Mike would notice something was wrong as soon as he heard Chuck's voice. Chuck presses his forehead hard into the bone of one wrist and forces himself to breathe.

He's sitting there for a minute or two, knees pulled up to his chest and shoulders hunched, when the high-speed whirring beat of familiar footsteps break the quiet.

"Oh," says a jerky, mechanical voice. "It's a burner. Cyborg Chuck."

Chuck glances up—Cyborg Dan is staring down at him. Chuck groans and drops his head back down, resting his forehead against his knees.

"…don't call me that."

"You are one of us." Cyborg Dan sounds offended, as far as a robot can. "You did not, tell me."

"I'm not a robot," Chuck repeats, defeated, face still buried in his knees. "I didn't tell Mike, why the—heck—would I tell you?"

"…you should stay away from MIKE CHIL-TON," Cyborg Dan says firmly, and pats Chuck's shoulder with a metal pincer. "He is. Bad. News."

"Go away," says Chuck miserably, muffled into his folded arms. "Mike's great and you're not even a cyborg."

"Oh. I see how it is." Cyborg Dan's lit-up face frowns. "Not even a little sympathy. From a fellow robot. You. Suck."

Chuck doesn't bother to answer, just puts his forehead back down on his knees and reaches up to his comm. No point putting it off any more.

"Mike?"

Mike comes online so fast Chuck wouldn't be surprised if he was sitting there waiting for the call. "Yeah? You okay? What happened?"

He doesn't wanna leave me alone with stuff that belongs to him.

"I'm good." It takes an effort to make the words sound genuine, but it's worth it to hear Mike sigh on the other end of the line, relieved. "Can you come back up and get me now?"

"Sure," says Cyborg Dan sotto voce in the background, with bitter malice. "Ignore me."

"On my way." Far down below, at the foggy base of the mountainous pile of trash the Duke has built his mansion on, there's a distant barking rev of Mutt's engine starting up. "What did he want?"

"Nothing?" God, how to even start to explain.

…Don't. Not yet. Chuck rests his chin on his arms, watching as Mutt's sputtering fuschia and neon blue exhaust flares climb the winding road to the mansion.

"…just letting us know he wasn't dealing with Kane anymore, and…I dunno." (Chilton owns you!) "I think he just likes freaking me out."

"So you don't trust Chil-ton." Cyborg Dan says, and Chuck glares at him. "You don't want him to know. That's good. He could melt, your face. He has a record."

"Go away."

"Huh?" Mike sounds perplexed—Chuck scoots down the steps away from Cyborg Dan and pulls the call back up. "Go away?"

"It's that creepy robot," Chuck says, and hears Dan make more noises of sarcasm and disgust further down the steps. "Telling me you're bad news. I'm gonna kick that thing down the stairs."

Mutt screeches to a halt in front of him. Mike rolls down the window—Chuck sees his own icon flicker out as Mike hangs up the call, grinning at him.

"Hop in."

"My nemesis," says Cyborg Dan, as Chuck pries himself up off the steps and swings himself through Mutt's passenger door. "Be afraid. You are going—to pay. My plans will be—"

"So how's our favorite nutjob?" Mike says, and hits the gas. In the rearview mirror, Cyborg Dan rapidly shrinks, mechanically waving a fist, probably cursing Mike's name. "Still as much fun as ever? He didn't sniff you or anything, did he?"

Chuck snorts. Just being in Mutt and having Mike there is smoothing over the jagged mental static of anxiety—even with Mike's reckless driving, there's a weird kind of safety to being here, in the dark with his monitors and Mike's hands on the wheel.

"He just talked a lot," he says, and doesn't mention security overrides, the awful, stomach-turning jerk as the computer kicked in and some crucial part of his brain flicked off like a switch. "Y'know. I mean, I think he still has a grudge, and he doesn't wanna talk to you because he knows you're still ticked off."

"Of course I'm still ticked off," says Mike, and when he says it it doesn't sound like a replacement for some other, stronger language. Oh, Mike is ticked off. Gosh, he's mad. Chuck snorts again, and when Mike glances over at him, questioning, it just makes him laugh out loud. "What? Dude, what?"

"Nothing!" Chuck's laugh turns into a squawk as Mike, not looking, cuts a turn way too close to the edge of the road—Mike glances back ahead and momentarily bothers to correct course, one-handed. "Mike, jeez!"

Mike doesn't bother to respond to that—Chuck yelling at him is basically white noise by now, they both know it—but he does put his other hand on the wheel.

"So he didn't…I dunno. You're okay?" And then, eyes narrowing angrily, "—is this about the driving thing?"

God, he forgot Mike knew that the Duke knew. There wasn't really any way to avoid the whole thing coming out, not when Mike sat down at the table with a black eye and a split lip, frowning like a thundercloud, and said "—now why was that maniac driving my car?"

"No, it wasn't that." Shit, but that's the wrong way to say it, because—

"Not…that?" Mike glances over again. "—so it was something?"

"No."

Mike doesn't look convinced. Fuck. (And he's almost pushed the word out of his vocabulary, but sometimes there's no other good word, fuck this whole mess) He's worried, Chuck can tell—not just because they've known each other for so long, or by the tense frown on his face, but by the way the speedometer has crawled down to a practically unheard-of 150 mph and the way Mike's been in the same gear for more than three minutes straight. Chuck's never bothered to mention to Mike that the way he drives is almost as expressive as his face.

"It's nothing," he says again, finally. And he knows that Mike knows, he knows that Mike has been friends with him long enough that he hears I don't want to talk about it please don't ask me in every syllable. Mike blinks, taken aback, and then sighs and turns back to the road.

"…okay," he says, quiet. "…gotcha." And then, a little stronger, "…but if he starts doing something—if he starts trying to make you do stuff, or—I dunno, if he does something you don't like, tell me. Okay? Nobody should have to deal with that guy on their own. He's a loose cannon."

Well, that's probably as good as he's going to get.

"Sure," says Chuck, and lets out a breath as Mike focuses back on the road, speedometer ticking up, shifting up into 22nd for a long, wide spiral of road that loops around an old, ruined museum. Mutt flickers in the few remaining windows as they drive, throwing sparkling reflections off the edges of shattered glass. "...I'll be okay."

It's not the answer Mike's looking for and he knows it, but Mike just nods once and looks ahead of them, watching the road pensively as they fly past the neon lights and bombed-out darkness of Motorcity.

---

It's almost a week later, after a cathartic tussle with some distant south-side gang in weird clown makeup, and Mike is settled down but still jumpy, when he gets another message. This time he's on the end of the battered sofa, watching Julie, Texas and Dutch all play Souls of Darkness: The Darkening of Souls IV, with Chuck leaned back against his knees typing, and he's distracted and maybe that's why he opens the message without bothering to check who it's from.

"…what's up?" Chuck says after a while, when Mike fails to react to one of Dutch's really spectacular last-minute saves—when he looks up, Mike is staring at the screen, looking angry and confused and mostly just tired. "…Mikey?"

"It's the Duke again." Mike leans back in his chair with a weary groan. "Jeez, he only made you go see him—what, a couple weeks ago?"

"Maybe he thought of more stuff to say," says Chuck, and fidgets. "…Mike, I don't…"

"You don't have to go back up there alone," Mike reassures him before he can even get the words out. "He wants me with you this time, actually. He says you were, uh…"

For a second, pure terror bottoms out Chuck's stomach. "…said I was what?"

"Well, he…he says, uh. 'He was so busy squeaking every time I moved, I don't think he was listening to me at all'." Even through Mike's apologetic tone, the Duke's casual, amused disdain is crystal-clear. Chuck hunches down in his seat. "Don't worry about it, man. I think you're right, he just likes messing with you. Oh."

"What?"

"…'I just like messing with him,'" Mike reads. "…'he makes it so easy'. Uh…yeah. Man, remind me why we have to work with this guy, again?"

"Because he owns a huge chunk of the city and somehow everybody owes him a favor even though he does nothing but make a mess?" Julie groans and throws down her controller. "—I'm dead again. I think I'm really bad at this."

"You gotta use your health potions," Dutch says encouragingly, not taking his eyes off the screen. "—don't worry, that's why I play healer-paladin, just make sure you don't go charging in this time. Rogues don't play like that."

"That's TEXAS'S JOB!" Texas contributes, smashing buttons so fiercely it kind of looks like he's going to break the controller.

"That's Texas's job," Dutch repeats. "That's what the tank's for. Just let it happen."

It would be so nice if Chuck could just drop in, pick up a controller and start buffing. But Mike is already getting up, pulling his jacket on, and Chuck isn't letting him go over to that psycho's mansion all by himself. He'd just worry the whole time Mike was gone anyway. He sighs and pulls himself up, shuffling in Mike's wake toward the garage.

---

Chuck is pretty quiet on the drive over to the Duke's mansion, apart from the noises of terror when Mike takes a curve too fast or jumps a building to get to an overpass faster. He seems worried about something. It doesn't sit well with Mike—not after that creepy and send him alone message. Chuck said it was fine, but he looked really freaked out afterward. More than just normal just-talked-to-the-Duke freaked out.

But if he doesn't want to talk about it he doesn't want to talk about it, and Mike's not going to push too hard. Chuck can handle himself. They've covered that.

"I can go in by myself," he tries, when the Duke's mansion comes into view in the distance and Chuck makes a quiet whimpering noise that has nothing to do with his driving. "Seriously, he can just deal with it. I don't have to put up with his crap."

"We do though," Chuck says, with defeated certainty. "He still owns the junkyards. His gang's huge, just…let's just get in there and then get back out again, okay?"

"Sure." There he is again, freaking the heck out but doing what needs to be done anyway. Mike smiles as he looks back at the road, and zig-zags slowly up the Duke's mountain of trash to the blinding lights of his front yard. Number 2 is there again when they get there, waiting the same way she did last time—Mike doesn't even wait for her to open her mouth, just grumbles "—I know, I know, he's waiting for us. Whatever."

"Mike." Chuck swallows hard, then takes a couple of hurried steps to catch up as Mike strides toward the front door, catching him by the shoulder and pulling him around. He looks worried, and Mike is abruptly aware of the fact that his hand is squeezing the familiar cold steel of the skull in his pocket so hard his fingers ache. "—Mikey. Chill. Last time you went in there keyed up, there was a bounty and a lot of people tried to kill us and we all got kidnapped. Remember that part? Hostages, bounty, any of this ringing a bell? Or the race, you started fighting and you bet your car. Just—can y'cool down first, maybe?"

"I'm tired of this guy yankin' my chain all the time." Mike glares up at the doors. "I'm tired of him acting like it's funny to freak you out, too, where does he get off?"

"Promise me you're not gonna do anything dumb when we get in there."

"Dude—"

"Promise me?"

Mike sighs. "…sure," he says, defeated. "Promise."

"Okay." Chuck squeezes his shoulders once, then lets him go and steps back. "…okay. Let's…do this."

Mike takes the lead, lets Chuck fall in behind him and sees the slight slump of his shoulders that means he's relieved. That's good. Whatever this freak wants to say, he can say it to Mike. And Chuck—

…isn't following him anymore. Mike turns back; Chuck is standing still, staring ahead and frowning vaguely.

"Chuck?" Chuck blinks at the sound of his name, rubs his eyes and shakes his head sharply. "You okay?"

"Yeah." Chuck shakes his head again, scrubs at his eyes roughly and then keeps walking. "…nngh. Headache."

"Well, get ready for that to get worse." Mike says it half as a joke—Chuck groans. "Come on, bud. We'll get in and out as fast as we can."

"…yeah." Chuck chews on his lip for a second, hesitating. "Mike, listen, I—"

"LOOK who decided to show!"

It's been four or five times now. Mike watches the lightshow impassively, arms crossed, feeling Chuck edge a little closer to his shoulder as the Duke finishes off his entrance with a pretty impressive flip and lands neatly on the platform of his throne, leaning on his cane.

"Took you long enough!"

"I'm gonna give you…five minutes," says Mike, instead of justifying that with a response. "And then we're going home."

"Uh-huh." The Duke sounds unimpressed. "No. You wanna hear what I have to say."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah." The Duke flops back into his chair in a mess of gangly limbs. "—y'see, I'm bored, Mr. Chilton. I need some action around this little town of mine, keeps me fresh! You noticed how boring it's been?"

Mike has definitely noticed, but it rankles to admit he shares a sentiment with the Duke of Detroit. He doesn't answer—it doesn't matter. The Duke isn't waiting for a response.

"—so I thought I'd get things moving again, and I figured—why not play some cards I've been holding onto for just such a day as this?!"

"Get to the point, Duke."

"The point is that I was gonna keep this a secret," says the Duke, "—but I think you should know, I've got some action for you to get in on."

"If this is about that stupid TV show thing again—"

"Oh no." The Duke waves a hand, dismissing the point. "No, I've got nothing but information for you, Mike. I have something to show you that I think you'll find very interesting."

Chuck tenses abruptly, eyes darting from Mike to the Duke, hands closing tight on the sleeve of Mike's jacket. Mike half-glances back at him with an absent, reassuring smile, not quite taking his eyes off the Duke.

"Yeah?"

"Oh yes."

"…Mike…" Chuck's voice is tight with barely-controlled panic—Mike turns back, worried, but the Duke has already pointed his cane straight at Chuck's chest, grinning wide and satisfied.

"Command," he says, almost lazily as Chuck shakes his head and starts to back away. "Override 0, stand by for orders."

"What?" Mike was about to pull his staff-he stops instead, confused, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Behind him, Chuck goes perfectly still, frozen in mid-step, and then slowly eases back to a stand-still, waiting. "What the heck are you talking about?"

"Acknowledged," Chuck says, quiet and flat and empty. "Standing by."

"Chuck?" Mike looks back to him—Chuck is standing still, staring ahead, barely breathing. "What's up?"

"He's not listening to you, Mr. Chilton," says the Duke indolently, and snaps his fingers. "Command; registration inquiry."

"What's going—?" Mike starts, but Chuck talks over him, even and clear and emotionless.

"Registration inquiry acknowledged. Registered—2—September—2318. Age: 18. Combat designation failed. Designated engineering unit—"

"Duke," Mike says, and there's more than an edge of threat in his voice over a barely-audible thread of panic. "What did you do?!"

"…to Chilton, Mikhail, 9/5/2318."

Mike bares his teeth and takes a step towards the Duke, whose smile falters, but then Chuck is talking again and Mike turns back, transfixed, as screens shimmer into existence in front of Chuck and his voice goes on and on, blank and distant.

"System alerts retrieved. Increased heart-rate. Increased respirations. Increased cortisol levels. Sensory overstimulation. Analysis…" and his voice is shaky for a second, his eyes flicker away and down and his face is ashy. "…I'm…scared. I didn't want this to happen."

"Inquiry," says the Duke, with the air of a magician pulling a really good trick out of the hat. "—how much of you is still human?"

Chuck's hands twitch.

"…100%," he says.

The Duke sighs and rolls his eyes. "Oh alright, make me get technical. Picky picky. Inquiry; how much of you is still organic?"

"21.1%"

"Chuck," says Mike, and Chuck hangs his head and doesn't meet his eyes. "Hey—look at me, bro."

"You're going to have to override him if you want him to follow orders," the Duke drawls, and kicks his feet up, leaning back in his throne. "He's very…" his glasses slide down his nose as he inclines his head, giving Chuck a lazy, amused look over the rims of his aviators. "…stubborn."

"Let's go," says Mike fiercely, and grabs Chuck's arm. "Come on, Chuck."

"He can't." The Duke points his cane at Chuck. "He won't."

"I can't," Chuck repeats, numb and quiet.

Mike looks from Chuck to the Duke and back again, and then reaches out, wraps an arm around Chuck and pulls.

Chuck flails and then tries to struggle, but Mike has him off his feet and he doesn't have any leverage to resist as Mike pulls him down the hallway. The guards start to raise their guns—the Duke raises a languid hand. "Let them go."

"Duke," says Number Two flatly.

"I know what I'm doing!" The snap is sudden and loud, echoing around the room—the guards jerk to full attention. Number Two frowns but steps back and silently crosses her arms. "This should be prime entertainment."

---

Chuck stays tense and frozen and silent until the moment they leave the Duke's property, and then he slumps like a puppet with its strings cut, takes a huge gasp of air and promptly starts to hyperventilate. Mike glances over at him, eyes wide, weighs the benefits of getting back to the hideout against the scary way Chuck is struggling for air, and then makes a split second decision and jerks the wheel, skidding to a halt in the middle of the deserted road.

"Chuck—"

Chuck hunches in on himself as far as he can with his belt on, pulls his knees up to his forehead and wheezes and it sounds like he's going to die. Mike unbuckles his belt to turn in his seat, reaching out in uncertain comfort—Chuck makes a high, panicked noise at the touch of hands on his shoulders and Mike flinches back again.

"What the heck did he do?" he mutters, more to himself than to Chuck, and then reaches out again and hesitantly touches the shaking fingers of one hand. When he pries Chuck's fingers up and gets them loose enough to slip his fingers between them, Chuck clenches their hands tight and squeezes hard enough to hurt. "—ow—okay. Uh…it's okay, dude, it's okay…"

Chuck shakes his head jerkily and makes a garbled sound that might be words—fake and idiot and human and lying. The hand that's not holding Mike's comes up and clenches white-knuckled in his hair, tugging hard.

How much of you is still human?

The questions Mike wants to ask burn at the back of his throat, but that's definitely not going to help right now. He bites them back and instead he squeezes Chuck's hand, gets a hand behind him to rub circles on his back. That always used to help, whenever he found him having a panic attack in Deluxe. They were never this bad though. How much of you is still human?

…transfer to Chilton, Mikhail…

The date he'd said was just a couple days before they came down to Deluxe. Before the anniversary. Julie brought Chuck back from some kind of…internship? Another week-long…seminar…thing? Or was it another one of his surgeries? Chuck always got a lot of those, way more than most of the other kids in training with them. There was always a reason though, some kind of disease or a scar from the last one that needed to be fixed, always something urgent and potentially really, really bad that had to be fixed today, tomorrow, by the end of the week.

Mike had always known, ever since they were kids, that Chuck was always sick and always broken. That it was Mike's job to make sure that despite all of the operations and the anxiety Chuck really lived outside of hospital rooms and lecture halls, and that it was just as much his job to make sure nothing bad happened to him.

He's coming slowly to the realization he didn't do his job.

"…you're still a burner," he says, because that's what's important right now, and Chuck's shoulders hitch. "No matter what. You're still one of us. You're still my best friend. You're still a burner."

The longer he repeats it, the slower and easier Chuck breathes. Mike gets a hand down and opens up the seatbelt, and Chuck slumps sideways against him. Not clinging, just draped against his side and shivering. The gear-shift digs into Mike's side as he leans over and gets his free arm around Chuck's shoulders, but it's not important. Chuck is still shaking so hard his teeth are faintly chattering.

"Are you okay?" is the second most important question, and Chuck squeezes Mike's hand but doesn't answer for a long time. When he does, his voice is tiny and shaking.

"…no."

"What can I do?"

Another long minute.

"…home."

Mike buckles him back up and drives slow, and Chuck lies back against his seat and doesn't say a word.

---

When they get home, Mike wraps an arm around Chuck's shoulders and steers him in. Dutch tries to talk to them, looking worried as Chuck winces away from his voice—Mike glances up at him and shakes his head minutely. Dutch bites his lip and then nods and backs away.

Chuck relaxes a little bit when Mike helps him into his room and closes the door. It's dark and quiet and a little bit cooler than the rest of the hideout, just the way Mike knows Chuck likes it when he's overloaded. Mike helps him down into the bed and starts to ease him over on his side; Chuck shakes his head mutely.

"…better?"

Chuck hesitates for a long second, then nods slowly, like the motion is painful. "…didn't want it to go like that," he says, very softly.

"Hey, it's cool."

Chuck lets out a sort of ragged cough that might be a laugh. "Mike, holy shit."

"What?"

"It's kind of a big deal, okay?" Chuck sniffs and scrubs at his eyes—shit. Shit shit shit. "—it's not—you can't just…shrug it off."

"I'm not shrugging it off." Mike reaches out again, slowly, giving him the chance to pull away, and rests a hand on Chuck's back, rubbing slowly in circles. "I'm freaking out a little bit. I don't know what they did to you, y'know? I don't know what happened to you, it's…" The words hurt to say. "…scary."

Chuck's mouth falls open. He seems speechless, but Mike sees his mouth form the word …scared…?

"Chuckles," Mike says firmly. "You are my best friend. Ever. Okay? I don't know what the Duke did to you, I don't know what those—what—Kane's guys did to you. So yeah, of course I'm scared!"

"Oh," says Chuck weakly. "I…oh." And then, quietly, uncertainly, "…you…wanna know?"

"What?"

Chuck ducks his head sharply—scrubs at his face again. "…would it—make you feel better? I mean, if you knew."

"Is that okay?"

Chuck shrugs, and doesn't look up. "…sure."

"No—Chuck, seriously. Is that cool?"

"Yeah." Chuck nods, more confident. His breathing is starting to even out again, still scared but not panicking any more. "If, uh…if I wanted anybody to know, you're probably…yeah. I just…didn't wanna tell you like this. Couldn't find the right time, y'know?"

"Okay." Mike sits down hesitantly, waiting. Chuck doesn't look at him; his hands knot up in his lap.

"I could—tell you, but I figure it'd be easier just to show you. So…" Chuck licks his lips, nervous. "I've got the records. Ever since I got the first implant in my eye I've got, like…the pictures. But they're not always available for my brain, you have to ask for them. Ask the…computer part for them." His voice drops, tight with a bitter combination of anger and shame. "…like the Duke did."

"Okay?" the tension is killing him. Having something wrong and nothing he can do to fix it, it drives him nuts. Mike sits for a second in silence, and then prompts, "…I don't know how to do this, dude. You're gonna have to help me out here."

Chuck takes a long, deep breath. "…right. Uh…okay. Say…'command'."

"Command," says Mike obediently. Chuck's whole body tenses for a second, a sharp jerk and release. "—whoa! Hey, if it…hurts you or something—"

"No." Chuck takes a deep breath. "Nah, it just feels…it's like…somebody grabbing me by the brain. Now say…' command…upgrade and enhancement inquiry'."

"You sure?"

Chuck's mouth thins into a stubborn line. Mike sighs.

"…command," he says. "Upgrade and enhancement inquiry."

Chuck stills, his voice goes flat, his eyes go far away. "Inquiry acknowledged. Retrieving." He holds his hands up; screens flicker up in front of his palms. Lists of dates. Files. "Surgical procedures, 167. Programming procedures, 34. Overall project outcome…11%. Failure."

"Uh…" Mike stares for a second, lost for words. Surgical procedures, 167. "…in…quiry?"

Chuck blinks, a flicker of movement behind his hair. "Define Inquiry."

"Right, okay. Inquiry…why was the project…a failure?"

Chuck's body winces a little. His voice stays even. "Accessing director's note," he says. On the screen, a face pops up; an old man with a harsh, lined face.

"The subject shows signs of increased durability and increased processing speed," he says, and rakes a hand through his hair. Annoyance breaks through his professional tone. "—but he's no super-soldier. The neurological implants have had some…unintended effects. Parasthesias, synesthesias, panic attacks, increased sensitivity in all his senses—we woke him up after the recent recalibration and he did nothing but scream. They're recalibrating again now, but we can only do so many surgeries in one day, Mr. Kane."

The name sends a jolt through Mike's bones. Chuck doesn't move, staring straight ahead.

"The weapons integrated well, and the new holo-screen technology works as well as he theorized it would, but unless you have any objections I'm only going to authorize a few more attempts before I declare this project a failure."

Somewhere far off in the background, there's a terribly familiar, echoing scream. In the present, Chuck's body shudders all over. In the video, the director frowns over his shoulder.

"…twilight anesthesia is more difficult and erratic with the enhancements as well," he says, almost more to himself. "At least his programming is sound. We send him back to his pod with the directive not to mention the project to anyone but his registration holder, and nobody will be any the wiser."

"They said you needed those surgeries," Mike says, distant to his own ears. There's a roaring noise in his skull. "They said you were sick."

Chuck doesn't answer.

"Uh. Inquiry. How do I make you free?"

Chuck's head bows a little.

"Registration has to be held by an individual distinct from the unit," he says.

"What?"

Chuck doesn't answer. Mike growls under his breath. "—just—talk to me!"

"…it's easier this way," Chuck says, very quietly. "Mikey, please."

"…command," says Mike, and Chuck bites his lip. "…use words I understand."

Chuck hesitates for a long, long second. Then—

"—I can't own myself."

"Why does somebody need to own you, why can't you just be free?"

Chuck shakes his head. "I can't own myself," he repeats, and there's a note of heavy bitterness to his voice.

"Why did they—do this?"

For a second, Chuck's teeth bare and grit. "Successful combat units need failsafes," he says, and he's retreated behind the blank, deadpan computer voice again. Maybe it's easier for him that way. "A successful combat unit would need to be controlled."

"Why you?"

Silence. Then, on the screen, a picture. A letter. Chuck's hands are gripping the paper in the picture, long and skinny and pale. His voice cuts in over top, reading out loud to himself. The video is low-quality and wobbly, not stabilized, and Chuck's voice is so young. Mike forgot how happy he used to sound—the constant, stressed tremor of his voice isn't there.

-for your exemplary work at such a young age in the field of computer and astrological sciences, biomedical engineering and robotics…participate in—experimental trials of your junior thesis, authorized and funded by Kane Co oh my god! Oh my god—Mikey!" The camera swings away from the letter as Chuck starts to turn—it's their old pod. Small plain and serviceable, low on its building, all they were allowed on the budget for orphans and misfits Kane grudgingly put aside. Chuck stops. "…oh," he says, and the camera—his eyes—drops to the floor, to the letter hanging in his hand. "…right."

The date in the corner says it's the day after cadet conscription. Mike hadn't realized their home looked so empty without his belongings in it.

Blink

"Day one, first day post-op," says Chuck, high and excited and young, and the picture has changed. Chuck is looking at himself in the mirror, eyes wide and bright through the messy edge of his bangs. The picture is way clearer, steadier. "—there's barely a scar, wow! It—" the video jumps. When it comes back Chuck is staring at himself in the mirror, concentrating intensely—he relaxes. "—okay," he says, "—so…gotta learn to control that now, that's okay. Stop—record—stop—record—"

The video flickers in between the words, and he looks so young and so excited. He can't be older than fourteen.

Another blink, and the video changes. Mike hears a voice in the background of the recording and realizes with a jolt that it's his, younger and lighter but definitely his voice. He's counting, tight with effort—pushups, probably. He always got antsy when he got a break, spent his free time back at his pod training instead of resting, pushing himself as far as his body could bear. In the foreground Chuck looks a little thinner, older, more stressed. His hair has grown out a little.

"Day thirty-three," he says, and he slurs a little. Blinks hard. "Day…day thirty-three. The…arms feel—wrong. I'll get used to them. They're heavy."

"Hey Chuckles! They said you could eat tonight, right?"

Chuck glances back and then to the mirror. In the mirror, his eyes look worried and tired. When he talks, there's a familiar tremor to his voice.

"…I'm glad there's a break before the next surgery," he says quietly. "I don't—"

"Chuck, come on!" Mike yells in the background, and the image blurs as Chuck glances away from the mirror.

Blink.

"…just woke up," says Chuck, and pulls his shirt collar down, craning his head back to bare his neck. There's a livid hairline scar on his breastbone, stretching down his chest under the collar. "I don't—know what—my head hurts." He blinks and runs his fingers through his hair, and then takes a deep breath in and out. In and out. There's no date at the corner of the screen, but Mike remembers the chest surgeries; they've skipped forward a couple of months, at least. The dark circles that Mike's gotten so used to are starting to come in under Chuck's eyes.

"…the headaches have gotten worse," he says, and he's obviously making an effort to keep his voice clear and his eyes focused. For a second the picture goes dark as he closes his eyes. "…They said—they found something in my lung last time they were operating, so they had to go in again, and I can breathe better now but it feels…weird." He snorts at himself, a tired half-laugh. "...'feels weird'. Wow, that's…that's some good science right there."

Blink.

Mike is in the background with a towel around his waist, drying his hair. The camera focus—Chuck's eyes—keep flicking over to him in the background. He leans in to the mirror self-consciously, voice lowered.

"…so," he says. "The break's been good. Time…ngh. Time to recuperate."

"Mm?" Young Mike turns back with a toothbrush in his mouth. "Whzzt?"

"Nothing, Mikey." Chuck rubs one temple. "Mnh. Just talking to myself."

"Oh." Mike shrugs. "…'kay." And Mike wants to grab his younger self and shake him because it's right there in front of him, but he's just turning away, finger-combing his hair, shrugging it off. On his own back, foreign but familiar, Mike sees the jagged gash he got the day before his sixteenth birthday, neatly closed with Deluxe skinbond but still puffy and fresh. For just a second the frustration in Mike's chest turns into something aching and old and never-quite-healed. This version of him is still a cadet. He can only have months between him and his promotion. His first mission.

"Two more," says Chuck to the mirror, and closes his eyes.

Blink

"Back in for another surgery tomorrow," says Chuck in the video, and sighs, rubbing the back of his neck. "…they fixed the neck problem, I guess. And the scars have cleared up okay, so…but I don't know what this one is even…" He pulls up a screen—it wobbles and glitches a little and he frowns at it until it steadies. There's a date on the screen, backwards but clear, and a jolt runs up Mike's spine—three weeks until the anniversary. Somewhere in Deluxe, maybe at the same second this video was being recorded, Kane must already be planning his promotion.

Chuck frowns at the screens, the scrolling text there, and then sighs. "…oh. The other leg." He smiles—it's half-hearted at best. "…last prosthetic though."

"Whatcha talking about?" Video-Mike throws an arm around Chuck's shoulders—the screen jolts out of existence as Chuck yelps and jumps. "Oh man, they got you some of those new holo-screens? I heard the other guys talking about them, I guess they got way better with this patch!"

In the mirror, Chuck's mouth curves into a proud, self-conscious little smile. Past-Mike doesn't notice.

"Yeah," says Chuck. "Yeah, they're…pretty cool."

"We get everything last, up in the barracks," past-Mike says, and it's a completely unrelated pang to see how casually he talks about Kane Co., about "the other guys", about the barracks Mike used to live in. Those things didn't used to hurt. He'd almost forgotten. "By the time they send us our downloads there'll be another one out."

"…yeah," Chuck says again, distantly, and his eyes flicker over himself in the mirror; over the faint scars on his arms and legs and chest and face, the almost imperceptible gleam of light in the pupil of his right eye. For a second his hands clench, white-knuckled, on the countertop. "…always upgrading."

Blink.

"This project was a waste of Kane Co. resources."

The face is familiar—the head of the project from the first video. There's cold disdain in his eyes.

"Your research will be confiscated and destroyed," he says, and the tone of his voice makes Mike's spine prickle with anger. The video feed—Chuck's eyes—won't stay on his face. It blurs, like a camera lens in the rain. His eyes flicker down to his hands instead, bandaged and knotted up in his lap.

Even in the video it's clear his hands are shaking, and Mike wants to track this guy down and punch him in the face. In the recording Chuck's voice sounds very, very quiet, trembling as hard as his hands. "…I-I…I don't think…"

"Command, override 0. Open priority session."

The noise Chuck makes in the recording is awful, like somebody just punched him in the throat. His eyes snap up to the man's face again, his voice chokes out "—acknowledged, standing by for orders what did you—"

"Assign registration holder: Kane, Abraham."

"Ah—a-acknowledged—what—"

"You will not discuss the details of this project with anyone but your registration holder, unless you have your registration-holder's explicit permission."

"Acknowledged—"

"If you spread your research to third parties or discuss classified Kane Co. information, you will report to R&D for mandatory reprogramming and the information will be removed from your data banks. Do you understand?"

"Acknowledged." The word breaks, he sounds terrified and Mike can feel his own hands shaking but it's not from fear. "—stop—"

"Close session."

The video feed goes white and then black and then settles again. Chuck must be curled over on himself—the only thing on the screen is his knees in the familiar Kane Co. white and blue, a hand pressed to his stomach like he's going to be sick.

"You can report back to your pod," says the man's voice overhead. "…Your registration holder will contact you with any further priority orders."

"…wh—what did you do to…"

"Go back to your pod."

"What was that, what did you do—?" He's breathing hard and fast and deep; in the corner of the video a faded alert flickers up, CO2 levels decreasing, regulate respiration. "I didn't write that, that wasn't—what did you do?!"

"All that should matter to you," says the old man coldly, and there's nothing but disappointment and disdain in his eyes. "…is if you don't follow your orders, I'm going to do it again."

In the present, Chuck winces away from the words—the video glitches, frozen on that face. When he closes his eyes and hunches in on himself, Mike is already moving forward, grabbing his shaking shoulder and pulling him in close. Chuck goes stiff and still for a second like he wants to pull away from the touch, then he jerks like he's waking up from a bad dream, breathes in deep and leans into it. When he curls himself in tight, making himself smaller so Mike can rest his chin in Chuck's hair, he can feel Chuck's hands shaking.

"…I'm gonna find that guy and I'm gonna make him apologize to you," he says finally, quietly, and feels Chuck give a weak sort of laugh. "What was his damage?"

"R&D is like that," Chuck says quietly. "…I mean…he took a risk, getting Kane to okay a proposal from some kid he'd never seen before, and it went wrong. 11% success, that's…not good. He had a whole department and now Kane probably still has him working on better garbage disposal in some crappy one-man lab off on the edge of the city."

"He's still a jerk."

Chuck sighs and doesn't answer. For a minute or two they just sit there, silent—then Chuck sniffs and pushes himself away, sitting up straight and raking his hair back with both hands to let it fall back in a rumpled mess.

"…so," he says. "…that's…what happened."

"They said…something about waking up," Mike says, and Chuck blinks and then looks away, lips thinning. "—waking up in surgery—?"

"I don't remember that," Chuck says, quick and abrupt. "It only happened once or twice and either I wiped it or they did. Doesn't matter. I don't remember."

He says it fast—too fast, maybe. Because he doesn't want to talk about it, or because he's lying to make Mike feel better? Either way, he obviously wants to keep Mike from worrying about it. Mike bites his tongue and doesn't ask. The few stories he's had time to read over the course of his life come back to mind in blurry sections—something about robots.

"You can feel stuff, though?"

"The skin still has nerves, and the muscles and stuff have synthetic ones." Chuck clenches a hand, staring down at his knuckles. "They kept as much of the original tissue as they could, and I left the surface tissue in my designs because I didn't want…whoever it was—whoever ended up—" he struggles for a second, then soldiers on. "…I wanted to keep the nerves in the skin, but the muscles and bones are, uh…organic polymers. Metal."

"I wondered why you were so heavy," Mike teases, and Chuck half-laughs, like he's been taken by surprise. Mike reaches out and takes one arm, running his fingers over the skin, squeezing a little like he's testing the give of the flesh under his hands. It feels almost real, real enough he never thought about it before. But maybe it is a little cooler, a little harder than a normal arm would be. He can't tell if he's imagining it or not, now. "…wow. Did you say this was…your research?"

"Well, I mean." Chuck waves the hand Mike's not holding, cheeks coloring slightly. "Heh. Some of it, yeah. They put a couple of theories together." The thinly-veiled pride in his voice makes a warm, stupid glow light up in Mike's chest.

"Mostly yours though," he says, half-guessing, and Chuck fiddles self-consciously with the hem of his shirt and chews on his lip to hide a smile, not answering. "Wow. Did I ever tell you you're a freaking genius?"

Chuck ducks his head and grins, wide and embarrassed. "…could stand to tell me more," he mumbles, and glances up from under his bangs. "…Hey, Mikey?"

"Yeah?"

"…thanks."

"What?" Mike blinks, confused. "—what for?"

Chuck stares at him, mouth hanging open, and then slumps back with a long, long sigh that trembles like a sob. When he answers, though, his voice is soft and steady.

"…nothing," he says, and picks up the hand Mike's not holding like it weighs a million pounds, scrubbing awkwardly at his face. "…nothing, I guess."

"Cool." Mike stretches, twists in his seat and groans as his back pops. "Mmmngh I'm starving. Why does that weirdo always make trouble right before I'm gonna get something to eat?"

"Just to mess with you?" Chuck huffs out a laugh and pushes himself up. For just a second, he stands with his back straight and his shoulders pulled back, looking somewhere far away.

Then his back hunches and his shoulders draw into their nervous curve again, and things are almost normal. Mike lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding and gets up too. Everything is fine. His best friend is 90% metal, but he's still the same person he's ever been. He's hurt and scarred and exhausted, but he's still the same person he's ever been.

…somebody hurt him, right under Mike's nose, and that person deserves to pay. But Chuck is the same person he's ever been.

Do you still eat? Mike almost asks, and then realizes that's a really stupid question, that he's seen Chuck pack down meals twice the size of what Mike can handle. Same as he ever was. "Pizza?" he asks instead.

"Better than whatever Jacob's cooking," Chuck mutters, and rubs the back of his neck, grimacing. "Jeez, what a day. Holy—crap."

Mike almost grins at the cut-off space where the curse was obviously going to be, and then frowns instead as a thought occurs to him. "—hey, you didn't stop swearing because I—"

"I cleaned up my filthy fuckin' mouth because every time I didn't, you gave me that look," Chuck says wryly, and grins at Mike's instinctive wince. "Yeah, like that. My—programming—" the word is sharp with hatred, sudden and bitter. "—only registered, like…three orders from you the whole time we've been down here, okay? It's cool."

"What?" A cold pit opens up in the bottom of Mike's stomach. "—what orders?"

Chuck cracks his knuckles ostentatiously, and then flicks his fingers out wide, popping up three different screens side by side by side. Mike's face looks back from all three of them.

"Stick with me, okay? We'll be fine," says Mike in the first screen, dirty and bruised, grinning like a maniac in Kane Co. white and blue with Motorcity spread out behind him. (Not a problem, dude, says Chuck's voice in the foreground, shaky with relief and terror, and Mike grins bright and wide and sunny.) Mike remembers that day, brilliant and sharp in his mind—remembers the way Chuck smiled back at him, wide-eyed and scared. He'd grabbed Mike's hand when they ran down, held on tight.

"Stay alive," says Mike in the second, panicky, wide-eyed and shaky with adrenaline. One side of the screen is dark and blurry—his right eye was swollen shut. "Oh my god, talk to me—you okay? Chuck, are you okay?" (Mike, Chuck's voice gasps, and Mike's face crumples with relief, young and bruised and panicky, as one pale hand comes into frame to grab clumsily at his jacket. 'M okay, 's okay—) Chuck had broken a collarbone, in that first disastrous fight after Kane started sending bots down—cracked the arch of his cheekbone and ripped up one shoulder. Shot a bot with his slingshot at point-blank range and Mike had gotten there just in time to see him slam back and down into the ground and lie limp and still in a heap in the dirt. Stay alive, stay alive.

"Live fast," says Mike in the third, and holds up a patch in white and blue, smiling like he's not sure he should. "Live free." (…me? Chuck asks, and he sounds so unsure, his hand shakes as he reaches out like there's anybody else in the world Mike would ask first. But I'm just…)

"Those weren't orders," Mike says, but the words are distant and soft. It feels like the air's knocked out of him. "I was just—I just wanted—"

"It was important," says Chuck. "It mattered to you. Heh. Matters to me too. I like orders like stay alive." He grins, one-sided and wobbly. "…I like orders like stick with me. That's why I took them." Mike stares at him, and his face must show how completely freaked out he still feels because Chuck sighs and rakes a hand through his hair. "Listen. Tell me to do something."

"No."

"Mikey, seriously. Just…anything."

"Uh…" Mike flounders for a second, then points at a wrinkled shirt sitting on the bedside table. "—pick that up."

"No."

They sit for a second, staring at each other. Then Chuck breaks down and laughs, shaking his head. "Told you so," he says. "I don't have to follow your orders, Mikey, seriously. I'm still me, and I've fixed a lot of the really messed up stuff, anything I could get into on my own I shut off. I only take the important ones."

"The Duke made you do things," Mike says, faster and shakier than he means to. "Stuff you didn't want to do."

Chuck's smile falls. "…yeah," he says, and…hesitates.

"You don't have to tell me," Mike says quickly. "Seriously, it's cool."

"No," says Chuck, sudden and sharp, almost fierce. "I said I'd tell you. I trust you."

"You don't have to tell me everything to prove it, though," Mike argues. "—because I trust you too, dude, you know I do."

"He used a manual override."

Okay, so they're doing this. Mike sits back and tries to choke down the jittery nerves bubbling up in the back of his throat. Chuck's fingers tap out staccato patterns on his knees—typing, maybe, on some invisible keypad.

"The person I'm registered to should be the only one who can tell me what to do, but there's an override built in if it's an emergency. If Kane Co. needs me." The pure acid in the words is startling. "Override zero."

"That's what he said." Mike frowns, trying to think back. "…command…override 0."

And then he looks up at Chuck and sees him staring straight ahead, frozen, eyes unfocused, and realizes his mistake.

"Oh," he starts, "—no, wait—"

"Override acknowledged," says Chuck evenly. "Standing by for orders."

"What? No!" Mike grabs one of Chuck's shoulders and shakes him a little—Chuck doesn't resist, but as soon as Mike lets go he sits back to where he was, staring ahead. "Wake up!"

Chuck blinks once, slowly, and then again, shaking his head sharply like he's clearing away cobwebs. His eyes focus.

"Wow," he says, shakier than ever. "—wow it's—different when you do it."

"What?" Mike shakes him again a little bit, scanning Chuck's face—he doesn't look mad or upset, just numb. Kind of rattled. "What do you mean different? Dude, you okay?"

"Uh…" Chuck looks down at himself. Swings his feet and works his shoulders a little bit, like he's testing them out. "…yeah. I think so. It's just…stronger, I guess, when it comes from you. When the Duke did it I could shake it off—well, eventually, if he didn't give me orders, but Iiiii don't think that's happening when you do it."

"I am never saying that again," says Mike fervently. "Come on, let's get outta here."

Dutch is out buying new paints when they go downstairs—Texas and Julie are arguing about something when they get there, but they're both more than willing to break for pizza and together the four of them troop down to the cars and head off across town. The normalcy is an incredible relief. By the time they get there and have found a table, Chuck has gotten embroiled in Julie and Texas's argument, and Mike sits back and listens as they debate through dinner. Julie and Chuck are both arguing the almost completely pointless argument that the hero of their movie of choice last night couldn't possibly have pulled off one of his spy tricks—Texas is standing firm that he can because it's awesome and anyway, he's super smart and like a hacker and junk.

Mike just sits back and laughs, occasionally throwing in a comment on one side or the other, until the waitress shows up with the check. Julie and Texas both look up when she arrives—Chuck, agonized by Texas's complete refusal to understand, is still talking. "—not how a system like that even works, the time he would've had to put in—"

"Chuck," says Mike absently, and pats him on the shoulder. "…dude. Shhh." Chuck huffs and shuts ups.

"I'll grab the bill this time," says Julie. "Heard you guys had to deal with the Duke today, it's the least I can do."

"Jules, you don't hafta—"

"Mike," says Julie, and gives him the exact same pat on the shoulder he just gave Chuck. "Dude. Shhh."

She winks. Mike takes the point, and shuts up.

After dinner Texas has a "something" to go to that is definitely not a fight club, totally not a fight club, okay guys? And Julie needs to head back up to Deluxe for some kind of meeting, so Mike and Chuck wander back out to Mutt and pull up next week's shopping list. Part commissions for gangs, parts they need for their cars, Jacob's groceries, and a new door to replace the one Texas kicked down after a more-than-usually exciting mission.

Chuck is already tired, or at least he sounds like it—he's sitting up and talking, but when he gets quiet like this it usually means he's worn out and he either wants coffee or sleep. Mike usually tries to make sure it's the latter, because the last thing Chuck needs is more coffee and less sleep, but every time he asks if they should head home Chuck shakes his head and pulls up the next thing on the list and heck, it's nice to go out driving with him again.

And then a call pops up on their dash.

"I've talked to you enough for a year," says Mike, as soon as the Duke picks up, before he can get a word in edgewise. "You get a minute, and then I'm not picking up calls from you after this for at least a week or two. I don't care what kinda crazy crap you want to say, you can find somebody else to screw with."

"Oo, I think I hear a little bit of a short temper in here. Domestic strife?" The Duke peers around. "I don't hear screaming. Did Legs decide he didn't wanna ride with you?"

"One, my friends are none of your business," says Mike sharply, and the Duke laughs. "Two, Chuck's fine. We're fine. If you thought that was gonna cause a problem, you don't know us."

"If you say so." The Duke makes a show of yawning. "—anyway. I heard Rayon wants something made you don't have parts for."

He's obnoxious, but business is business. Mike rattles off the list of components they're looking for—the Duke scratches his beard contemplatively and then pulls up one of his own data screens and types something out.

"Coordinates," he says, and Chuck jumps as a map pops up on one of his screens. "You're welcome."

"Nobody said thank you," says Mike. "We'll take it. Keep your goons out of our way."

"Mike!" Chuck is already starting as the call closes. "—this is right through Amazon territory, and it's from the Duke so who knows how—"

"Hey man, come on." Mike leans back, buckling in. "Nothing's gonna happen."

"What if it does?!"

"It's not gonna."

"Oh, yeah," Chuck says, high with panic and dripping with sarcasm. "Sounds good! Wow, I am totally not worried anymore! Wow."

"Dude, calm down."

Chuck is apparently so offended he doesn't talk for the rest of the drive, and he even keeps his mouth stubbornly shut as Mike takes the single winding road that threads between two gang territories to one of the Duke's remote junkyards. It takes until they get back to the hideout for him to forgive Mike enough to talk to him again, but that might just be because he's definitely tired now, round-shouldered and feet dragging. It's been a long, long day. Mike unloads the parts they got from the back, drops them on the tables where they go, and he and Chuck wander upstairs.

Chuck gets the top bunk of the ancient bunk-bed they dragged out of the trash, because when he sits up on the bottom bunk his head slams into the sagging mattress and because that's how it's always been. Mike likes to be on the level by the floor, and after the first couple nights Chuck doesn't even worry too much that he might fall off and die in the middle of the night.

The routine is comfortingly familiar. Texas showers in the mornings, Mike and Chuck shower at night before bed—if they shower at all, Claire occasionally cracks to Julie when she thinks none of the other Burners can hear her. Chuck showers first because he's faster, and Mike showers second while Chuck kicks the discarded clothes and car parts around their floor into some kind of order. Switch rooms, get changed, fall into bed. After this many years, it's almost down to an art-form.

Mike reaches down and flicks off the lights. For once he feels wrung out enough he might actually sleep—they have a routine, yeah, but both of them kind of suck at sleeping. Mike is more of the "lie awake for three hours, get up and go beat up a punching bag until four AM" kind of guy, but he usually hears Chuck wake up gasping at least two or three times while he's lying awake. Then there'll be a soft green glow as Chuck opens up a screen to work on something for fifteen, thirty, forty-five minutes, and then he'll lie back again and get another hour of sleep before the next abrupt, panicky snap back to consciousness.

Tonight though, Mike is only lying there for a couple of silent minutes before he hears Chuck shift uneasily on the other bed.

"…hey, Mikey?"

"Yeah?"

"…today was really weird and crazy and—we're still cool, right?"

"Dude, 'course we are."

"Okay." Chuck takes a deep breath—the springs creak as he turns over. "…okay."

Silence falls for a long minute. Mike closes his eyes, and tries not to think about thinking about going to sleep, and he's just starting to get somewhere close to relaxing when Chuck abruptly shifts again.

"—listen, I'm sorry I never told—"

"…Chuck, it's fine. Go to sleep." Mike buries his face in his pillow. If Chuck answers, he doesn't hear. Still, breathing silence falls. Mike smiles, sighs fondly and tries to relax.

He must succeed at relaxing at some point, because the next thing he knows he's sitting up, awake and ready to go with a thrill of new energy electrifying his muscles.

"Chuck." He reaches up and thumps the underside of the other sagging mattress. "Hey, let's go!"

Not even a grumble. Usually he gets a couple of half-coherent growls at least. Mike pushes himself out of bed, stretches and turns around to lean on the side of the other mattress. Chuck is spread out across the bed in a mess of skinny arms and legs, blankets hanging off one leg, breathing slow and quiet. He looks knocked out—with his hair tousled and out of his face, the shadows under his eyes are dark and clear. Mike reaches out and pokes his forehead gently—nothing.

"Chuckles. Hey. Hey Chuck. Wake up."

Chuck's eyes snap open so abruptly Mike jerks his hand back. For a second they seem to glint brighter, a ring of blue-white light flares around the pupils. Then they're just their normal pale blue and Chuck jerks upright with a startled yelp. "Mike! Jeez you're gonna give me a—"

It's hard to describe what happens next—like a stutter, a split second of frozen stillness. Chuck freezes mid-word, his eyes dim to dark, dull blue-green and then there's a bright, sharp flash of blue-white again, Chuck jerks sharply and he's talking again like nothing happened. "—heart attack!"

"What?"

"I said you're gonna give me a—"

"No, I heard you." Mike leans in, staring—Chuck leans back, looking unnerved. "Your eyes did something weird."

"I—oh?" Chuck sounds confused, more than a little bit nervous, like he's not sure if "weird" is okay.

"Yeah, they…I dunno, you stopped moving and they went all dark for a second."

"What?" Chuck frowns and pushes his hair out of his face. "Right now?"

Mike leans in, squinting—the glow in Chuck's eyes is steady, barely visible even in the shadow of his hand and the dim light of the room. "Uh…no."

"It sounds like…" Chuck stops, still groggy and swaying a little, and then groans long and frustrated and pushes himself up, swinging his legs over the side of the mattress. "Shoot. Agh, this is the last thing I need right now."

"What? What's going on?"

"It's a micro-refresh," Chuck says grumpily, "—and it shouldn't happen while I'm in the middle of stuff, and it shouldn't take long enough to—" jerk, flicker. "—interrupt me when I'm talking. I just did it again, didn't I?"

"Yeah."

"Shit." Chuck pulls up a screen and then stops abruptly. "…Mike?"

"What?"

"Did somebody just turn off the lights?"

"What?" Mike looks around—the room isn't exactly bright, but it's certainly not dark. Light is coming in from the hallway outside, lighting the room up dim gold. "Uh…no?"

"Oh. Okay." Chuck blinks, then blinks again, harder, widening his eyes and staring around. "—my eyes just shut off. Gimme a second."

"They what?!" Mike's voice cracks a little bit and Chuck jumps, staring around blindly. Mike forces himself to lower his voice. "What?Is this supposed to happen?"

"No," says Chuck. He sounds way more annoyed and way less freaked out than Mike would be if his eyes just suddenly stopped working. "Something is f-f-f-screwing with my systems and they're trying to throw it out and I—" another hitching second of silence. "—get to deal with the side effects. Like a germ giving my organics a fever." He jerks again—blinks, and the dullness vanishes from his eyes. "There."

"So this is like…you're sick?"

"Somebody gave me a bug." Chuck holds out his hands—the screen in front of him expands, widening into multiple feeds, moving too fast for Mike to follow. "…not just a regular bug for a regular computer, something engineered to—" he stops, and for a second Mike thinks he's glitching again but it's realization that's frozen him in place this time. A second later he's throwing himself back on the bed and groaning, dragging his hands down his face. "—the Duke. Again! He's messing with me, again. Is he—jacking my visual feed?! Fuck! Sorry, but—fuck!"

"He's what?"

"He's in my eyes!" Chuck hisses a couple more curses that make Mike's eyebrows rise under his bangs. "—so the cameras all over our stuff last time weren't good enough, he thinks he can—dammit! I took a shower last night! He told you what I am and then he hijacked my eyes so he could watch the fallout!"

"So he's—what, he's listening in right now?" If he is, Mike has a couple of choice words to say—as soon as whatever's going on is cleaned up, he definitely owes somebody a punch in the face.

"He can't hear anything, there's nothing going on with my ears except my comm implant and that's on a separate system." Chuck blinks again. "But he can see whatever I'm looking at—see, now I know it's there I can feel it in my eyes aagh that's so gross! And I mean—he just hacked me? He just hacked me. One of my neural feeds, that's—it's not like there's enough cyborgs around for there to be rules or something, but that's just...rude!"

It would almost be funny if it wasn't so completely not okay—Chuck doesn't look scared so much as he's just really offended, like somebody stole food off his plate or made fun of Mutt. Mike, who's still shaky on what exactly is happening or how, is at least kind of comforted by the fact that Chuck's more angry than scared—that means it's bad, but it's not…"bots in the city, we're all gonna die everybody panic" bad. Chuck can handle it, it's just really really irritating, and that means it's okay to relax again.

"You should write it," Mike says, and watches Chuck flick through files, looking frustrated.

"What?"

"Cyborg rules."

"Ha ha," says Chuck sarcastically, and slumps down on the side of the bed, covering his eyes with both hands, rubbing at them like there's something stuck in one. "Auaughgh. Man, that's just—nasty. How am I supposed to work when I can feel whatever weird, gross code he bought messing around in my system?"

"No, I'm serious here dude."

"I'm gonna punch him right in the face," says Chuck, more to himself than to Mike, and then blinks as his brain catches up with his ears. "—serious about what?"

"You should make me some rules," says Mike, and pulls himself up on the bed, swinging himself up to sit next to Chuck on the side of the mattress with their feet dangling. "…so I know what I shouldn't do."

"You wouldn't know how to do most of the stuff I can think of," says Chuck plainly, and taps on a file. "—there he is. Yeah, right before he told you, I must've automatically connected to his network and…gimme a sec."

Mike leans over to watch, and then jumps a little bit as instead of starting into his usual rapid storm of typing Chuck drops his hands, leaving the screens where they are. He slumps forward and goes still all over, not blinking, barely breathing; after a second his lips start to move minutely, mumbling so quietly Mike can't make out individual words. On the screen, things reorder themselves, flash and vanish, initialize and load and run. It's like watching his brain laid out on a screen. Mike stares, completely confused but fascinated, as the file the Duke sent unfolds into a network of processes and subprocesses, then slowly starts to deconstruct itself, eating away like paper in a fire.

It can't take more than two or three minutes, overall, and there's way too much going on to follow but it's still cool to watch. By the time Chuck breathes in deep and finally blinks again, Mike is leaning in against his shoulder, watching with interest as the last traces of the original program burn away.

Chuck glances down at the screen and blinks—a loading bar pops up, flickering through strings of numbers and letters, virus scan in progress. It's an incongruous and familiar bright blue-white compared to the black and green of the rest of the screen, and there's text scrolling along the bottom of it as it loads.

"…make your day a DELUXE day," Mike reads, half-laughing. "Upgrade your coverage now for full—"

"Kane Co. sucks, but they've got good antivirus," says Chuck. He sounds a little bit ragged, like he sounds when he's been up late working and Mike catches him staggering in at five AM—like words are hard. "Wow. See if I ever accept a file transfer from the Duke again. What a dick."

"Well, nice to get the morning off to a nice, no-stress kinda start," Mike says brightly, and slides down off the side of the bed. Chuck snorts and then slides down after him, staggering a little bit. "You okay?"

"I'll, uh…I'll get there." Chuck shakes his head, scrubbing at his eyes one last time. "I can't believe he outed me like that just so he could watch you freak out about it."

"I didn't freak out," says Mike, and then wilts a little as Chuck gives him a look. "…that wasn't freaking out! I was totally calm."

"You did good," Chuck allows, and grabs one of his shirts and a new pair of jeans. "Way better than I figured you would. Ha…I worked myself up so bad about how you would react I forgot you were…you."

"What that supposed to mean?" Mike bumps his shoulder, grinning. Chuck shoves him back.

"You're dumb."

"You're dumb."

"Your face is dumb."

"I know, I know. Go get dressed already."

Chuck waves him off and vanishes into the bathroom to change.

It's almost noon by the time they wander down the stairs. Without any recent bot attacks to dictate sleep schedules, with no sunlight filtering through their area of the Deluxe ceiling, the Burners sleep when they feel like it and get up at any hour of the day, and it's not weird to see somebody come down yawning and disheveled at 11:30.

"Morning, sunshine." Jacob slides a plate down the counter as Mike settles down at one of the stools—Mike opens his mouth to ask what the dark spots in the pancakes in front of him are, then closes it again. "Breakfast for lunch. Eat up."

"Guess Jacob's…blueberries…? Are ripe?" Chuck is poking dubiously at his own plate of pancakes as Jacob vanishes back into the kitchen.

"I dunno, man." Mike takes a bite and grimaces a little bit, then swallows hard. "…doesn't taste like blueberries? I mean it's…not bad."

Chuck takes a bite and then another one, then seems to decide that his best chance is to just eat as much as possible as fast as possible. Across the room, Texas is chugging down muscle mulch, sweaty from his morning workout. Dutch is doodling in a battered sketchbook in the corner, looking more awake than anybody should at this time of day. Mike absently checks trackers—up in Deluxe, Julie is in Nine Lives on her way down.

"…I'm gonna go see the Duke again today," he says finally.

Chuck chokes on his pancakes. Mike keeps going, faster now, before he can swallow the food in his mouth and start talking. "I'm gonna go and tell him he can't screw with us like this." He glances over at Texas and Jacob and leans in. "He can't do stuff like what he did last night, especially not after he sold me out."

"Mike!" Chuck's voice cracks. "No!"

"If you just think about it, it's a good idea—"

"No! It's not a good idea!" Chuck pushes his seat back and starts to stand up, shaking his head. "—There are really good odds you won't even make—"

"Chuck, just—listen. Sit down." Mike leans in as Chuck, shoulders tense and mouth bent in an unhappy frown, sits jerkily back down—lowers his voice. "—I know it's dangerous, okay? That's why I don't want you to go."

"What?!"

"Dude, keep it down!" Mike glances around—none of the other Burners seem to have heard. "…I'm not putting you in danger. None of you should go with me on this, especially not you. You gotta stay here."

"But—" Chuck shakes his head again, but it's sharper this time, jerky. A sort of harsh shiver snaps through his whole body. "—no, but—I should—I have to—"

"Uh…Chuck?"

"Stick with me," Chuck mumbles, and reaches up to his head with shaking hands. "Sit down listen go to bed quieter wake up wait for me talk to me not going live free keep it get down get in stay alive—" The words come out in a long, unbroken rush. "—priority priority priority error priority—"

"Chuck? Hey—"

Chuck makes a loud, strangled noise and doubles over, holding his head and shaking all over. He's still talking, fragmented words that don't make any sense, repeating "—error ERROR—" like the words hurt—

"What in the heck is goin' on out here?"

Jacob comes out of the kitchen at a jog, towel thrown over his shoulder and soap on his hands. Mike pulls his hands away from Chuck's shoulders guiltily and stares up at Jacob helplessly, worried and confused. "Jacob! I-I dunno, he—"

"System malfunction—"

"System diagnostic," Jacob says urgently, and shoulders past Mike like he's not there. "Priority command: run system diagnostic."

Chuck freezes and then, very slowly, uncurls from himself.

"…acknowledged," he says, voice ragged. "Retrieving."

"What happened?" Mike tries to step forward—Jacob's pointy elbow hits him in the gut. "Ow!"

"Kid, you just stand back there and keep your trap shut," Jacob says firmly, and slides into the seat next to Chuck, wincing as he bends his creaky knees. "Uhhf. Priority inquiry: current command session."

"Mikhail Chilton. Registration holder, level one session."

Jacob turns back to Mike and frowns. "Mike…" he growls.

"What did I do?!" Mike bursts out, "—is he okay?" And then, second priority but almost as urgent, "—wait, you knew?"

"System diagnostic complete," says Chuck quietly.

"Show alerts."

Screens spread out in front of them, full of tiny, flickering writing. Jacob scans it, grumbling to himself under his breath, tracing a finger from line to line.

"…okay," he says after a long minute, and drags his hands down his face. "Alright. Kid, listen up and say exactly what I say. Command: cancel override session directives."

Mike repeats obediently as Jacob keeps talking, rattling off chains of protocols and commands. Every so often Chuck will pitch in with a command invalid or not authorized or acknowledged, processing and Jacob will growl or curse or nod and sit back to wait. When Mike opens his mouth to say something that isn't repeating Jacob's commands he gets sternly shushed, and eventually he stops trying. He's in trouble and if he's lucky it'll get explained later why. That's something he's used to at least. Cadets weren't expected to understand why they were assigned punishment detail, just that their performance had been sub-par and they needed to show improvement.

"…aaaand…close session," Jacob says finally, and sits back with a heavy sigh. "…command: recalibrate. Jeez. You kids..."

"Command: recalibrate." Mike leans in, worried—Chuck is still sitting still, looking straight ahead. "…Chuck? Uh…you okay?"

"Soft reboot," Jacob says, and pulls Mike down by the back of his jacket, settling him down in the seat on his other side. "He'll be back up in a couple minutes. Now what the damn hell did you think you were doing?!"

Mike flinches. I don't know isn't a good enough answer, has never been a good enough answer. Deluxe has taught him that much, at least. "—I…" he shakes his head helplessly. "What did I do?"

"You used a primary override, you knucklehead!" Jacob whaps him on the back of the skull. "The free will switch was turned off. He's in the car but he's not driving. Is this getting through to you, kid?"

"It was an accident!"

Jacob gives him a long look. "…okay," he says, "…tell me what happened. All of it."

So Mike does. The Duke, the long drive home, the explanation Chuck gave him, the long slow process that turned almost nine-tenths of him from flesh to metal and wires. The accidental override.

"—he woke up a second later and he seemed like he was okay!" Mike drags a hand down his face, feeling the guilt burn slow and thick down his spine. "…he…said he was fine. He acted like…like he always does."

"Except he followed every single order you gave him," Jacob says, and crosses his arms. "…You didn't notice, did you?"

"No!"

Jacob snorts and shakes his head, but the harshness is gone from his voice when he says, "—you're just like your dad sometimes, kid."

Something painful and warm knots up in Mike's stomach. Jacob never talks about—

"—anyway, you made a pretty big mess here," says Jacob abruptly, and turns away. "What did you tell him? 'Wake up'?"

"Y…yeah."

"That didn't end the session." Jacob looks at Mike's face for a second, then sighs and takes pity. "…look. You gotta tell a computer when it starts doing something and when it stops doing something. You told his brain 'start taking orders', but 'wake up' ain't the same as 'stop taking orders'. You got me?"

"Uh…yeah."

"I cancelled everything you told him to do while he was under," Jacob says, and raises a hand, ticking things off on his fingers. "…told him to ask you for confirmation before he takes any more override orders from you, checked his brain was doin' okay after all the ass-backwards orders you crammed in there and closed the session. With all the new tech and syntax and crap they're using up there now, that's about all I could figure out to do. But you gotta swear to me—"

"I'm never doing that again," Mike says immediately, and Jacob nods. "I didn't mean to. I would never do that on purpose."

"Not even if you thought it would save his life."

Mike opens his mouth, then hesitates. Jacob gives him a fierce look.

"If you'll do it for a good reason, you'll do it for a bad one," he says. "Unless he needs somethin' done and his stupid programming won't let him do it without you. Never."

"…never," Mike repeats, and it feels like a promise. "Yeah."

"…never what?"

Chuck sounds groggy and unsteady, like he just woke up from a nap. He sits up and groans, reaching up to his head, then flicks his hair back for a second to stare from Jacob to Mike.

"…what…happened?"

"You hit a feedback loop," Jacob growls, and reaches over to ruffle up Chuck's hair. "…how you feel, kid?"

"I…" Chuck groans again, very quietly. "…bad."

"Go lie down," Jacob advises, and elbows at Mike a little. Mike shifts over and lets Jacob slide out of his seat. "You like mint?"

"Mint what?"

"Tea." Jacob shrugs. "—I know you're a coffee man, but last time I heard caffeine doesn't do a lot for feedback." He frowns over his shoulder at the door to his kitchen. "…I've got chamomile-cinnamon too—"

"Mint." Another wince, like thinking is painful. "…mint's…good. Yeah. Sure."

"I'll get you some." Jacob turns to Mike, who resists the urge to sit up straight and salute. "You get him back upstairs."

"Yessir," says Mike, thoroughly chagrined, and scoots cautiously over toward Chuck, reaching out a hand as Jacob vanishes back into his kitchen, shaking his head and grumbling to himself. Chuck barely seems to have realized he was there—when Mike's hand touches his shoulder he jumps and yelps, then crumples back down with a soft, pained sound. Mike winces too and pulls his hand away. "—sorry, buddy."

"…s'kay," Chuck says blearily, and takes a deep breath, like every word is an effort. "…I'm gonna..."

"Yeah." It feels too…proprietary, too authoritative to take him by the shoulder or grab him by the arm to pull him up—a little awkwardly, Mike reaches out and takes one skinny hand, and Chuck stiffens for a second and then relaxes and lets himself be pulled upright. He follows Mike with his head down, and Mike catches a glimpse of his eyes under his hair and sees that they're closed.

The knowledge that this stupid, brilliant kid still trusts him is somewhere between totally amazing and unbearably painful. Mike takes a breath, deeper and shakier than he really means to, and then squeezes Chuck's hand and starts walking again, off into the dark and the quiet.

---

The other Burners are waiting when Mike comes back out of the room. He doesn't quite manage to look at any of them head-on. Julie's there too, and from the way she leans away from Dutch as he comes in, they've been talking—she'll know what happened, by now.

"…he's fine," Mike says.

"…okay…" says Dutch slowly, dubiously. Julie has her arms crossed, and there's something about the sharpness of her eyes that makes Mike remember the day she brought Chuck back made Mike look her in the eyes and give full, formal answers. Makes him remember the tone to her voice when she asked, can you take him now? And then when he hesitated, laughing a little, worried and confused, Cadet Chilton, take him from me.

Julie stares at him. Mike looks away.

Unfortunately, this leads the eyes straight to the only person he hasn't looked at yet. Texas is staring at him with utter confusion in his eyes, brows furrowed like Mike is a difficult problem that he hasn't figured out yet.

"Okay Tiny, what happened?"

Mike opens his mouth and then closes it again slowly.

"…I messed up."

Jacob, on his way past in the other direction with a cracked cup of tea, shakes his head and claps Mike on the shoulder in mute commiseration.

"Not an answer, dude," Dutch says firmly. "What happened?"

"I shouldn't…" Mike hesitates. "…it's his…" problem. His secret. What are you even supposed to call that? Our friend is mostly robotic and I technically own him and I've been hurting him and controlling him by accident I don't know what I did I'm really sorry. "I can't tell you guys. Sorry."

"We can't just not talk about it." Dutch crosses his arms. "When he comes out here..."

"He can tell you if he wants," says Mike firmly. "It's not my story to tell."

Things go sort of almost back to normal, after that. Everybody's talking more quietly, every so often somebody will glance up toward the door to the bedrooms. Mike sits back in one of the corners, taps one foot jerkily against the rising tide of self-hatred and overflowing energy, and thinks. Shhhh and calm down and go to sleep, those weren't orders, were they? They weren't—orders, they were just things you said, things nobody was supposed to feel obligated to obey, and he'd just assumed Chuck was going along with it, that he was being quieter because he was tired, that whatever was wrong he'd totally fixed it. How many other not-orders had he given while Chuck was under that he didn't remember?

Julie gives him a mug of tea at some point. Mike is so out of it he barely remembers to mumble something that sounds like a "thank you". The tea gets cold on the rickety end-table. Mike taps his foot and thinks.

They're sitting in strained peace for fifteen minutes before the door creaks open very quietly and Chuck edges out into the light. When he sees everybody sitting around waiting he pales and hesitates, but then he sees Mike sitting hunched in a corner the tension in him breaks. His shoulders slump. He picks his way through the room and stops a few feet from Mike like he's not sure he's allowed to go closer.

"…sorry," he says, very quietly. "I messed up."

"You messed up?" Mike's voice cracks a little bit, disbelieving. "—no, dude, this was all my fault."

"What was?"

Chuck jumps and whips around. Texas is watching him. Dutch is still over on the couch, but he's leaning forward, watching steadily. Julie looks quietly unhappy, but she's watching too. Transfer, Julie Kapulsky…she has to know already. Has to have known for a while.

"It's a long story," says Chuck, uncomfortable, "—and, I mean—I was stupid, it's no big deal." Mike opens his mouth to cut in because it is totally a big deal and he wasn't stupid at all—Chuck glances over at him and Mike immediately recognizes the please shut up Mike please don't even get started look. He shuts his mouth again.

"If it's your problem, it's our problem," says Dutch.

"I—but…"

"Spill," says Texas firmly, and that's that.

Mike is steeled for the entire, emotionally-draining mess of a story, but Chuck just lays out the bare bones this time; Deluxe, Kane Co., experiments, cyborg. The Duke, then an accidental override, then the conflicting orders and the breakdown. Mike is about to open his mouth to take the blame when Chuck says, quietly, "—it wasn't Mike's fault," and he freezes, choking on the words. "He didn't know." He glances at Julie. "…I should've told him."

Julie takes a slow breath through her nose. "It's not always bad to keep things a secret," she says evenly.

"Can you do cool robot stuff?" This from Texas, who has been standing there frowning intensely at Chuck for a long time, apparently processing the new information. "Can you shoot missiles? Have you been holding out on us."

Chuck holds up his arm. "I mean…I could always shoot missiles. You've seen me."

"What? No."

"Plasma bolts are a—"

"No, like real missiles!"

"Uh…"

"No, Texas," Julie says, longsuffering. "Stop bugging him."

Texas subsides, frowning.

"Are there other people like you?" Dutch sounds intrigued—his sketches turned to careful templates of machinery while Chuck talked, and now they've devolved into doodles of what looks like a human skull overlaid with circuits. "They gotta have tried again, right? I mean…how did we not hear about this? Why have we not got cyborg ultra-elites down here kickin' our butts all the time?"

"The project is discarded," Julie says. "Kane scrapped it and fired most of the staff."

"That's good," says Mike, more viciously than he really means to, "—they deserve it."

"They threw it out?" Dutch looks pained by the thought. "The whole thing? After one prototype?"

"Kane Co. does not tolerate failure!" Julie recites, in an almost frightening imitation of Kane's disdainful growl. "Of course he got rid of it."

"Okay, but," Texas interjects. "—they messed up his brain! That was really dumb. I mean, that's why they wanted him, right? His brain!" There's a collective wince from everybody who's not Texas at the words messed up his brain, but Chuck doesn't seem to care. He's got a hand under his hair, slowly rubbing at his temples, eyes closed.

"Kane was never good at thinking ahead," Jacob says, and there's that weird, almost fond aggravation to his voice. "…And besides, he doesn't care about the people who make his ideas happen, he just wants them done. He's all full of big ideas he doesn't know how to realize, so he threatens smart kids into doing it for him. Half of his R&D is coerced."

"…I volunteered."

There's a second of collective silence, before all eyes turn slowly to Chuck. He's sitting curled up in his seat, knees pulled up to his chest. He looks…tired. Not miserable, not happy, just exhausted.

"…They told me it was an honor to experience it first-hand," he says, quiet and level. "Y'know. Because it was going to make a super-soldier. So." He gives a shaky, barely-there smile. "…could finally have kept up with Mike."

The bottom drops out of Mike's stomach. The sick lurch must show on his face, because Chuck looks up and immediately stops smiling.

"Oh—Mikey, no, I didn't—"

"It was just a joke, Mike," Julie says.

"That's not why I took it," Chuck says hurriedly. "They told me about all the ways it would make my life great and how they'd give me my own research department when it worked and…all kinds of stuff." He hesitates, and then admits, very quietly, "…and…they said I could come live in the barracks with you."

"Kane didn't let anybody but cadets—"

"I woulda been one." Chuck shrugs. "…I mean. Kinda." He slumps down, dropping his head down onto his knees. "…shut up, Mike."

Mike shuts up.

"Okay but that's awesome," says Texas. He's been mostly quiet for the proceedings, processing things as the others talk—now he's grinning, wide and crooked and dangerous. "Texas wants robo-arms. Chuck you gotta make me robo-arms."

"What? No!" Chuck sits up straight like he's been electrocuted. "No, are you nuts?!"

"Come on, you just got cool and now you're bein' lame again, just think about it."

"No!"

"—with robot arms that shoot—"

"No!"

"—and totally kicking their butts and they'd be like ahhhhhhh Texas he's so coooool ghkk." Texas falls back on the couch in a dramatic simulation of the imaginary defeat of his enemies, clutching at his chest. "—like that."

"You don't want this," says Chuck, and there's a strain of bitterness under the words, sharp and painful. "Seriously, it's not worth—look, even if it was a good idea, which it's not, we don't have supplies down here, or—or surgeons, or the tech to do the neuroprogramming. Kane trashed the whole thing and they only made one set of the prosthetics they gave me, I'm one of a kind." The bitterness and sarcasm are open that time, but Texas doesn't seem to notice.

"Kay," he says, unphased. "New plan. Arm trade. BOOM! Chuck gets buff. BOOM! Texas gets robo-arms."

"Boom," says Chuck, "—Texas's arms are too skinny for his body for the rest of his life because metal muscles don't get bigger when you work out."

Texas deflates. "Seriously?"

"Seriously."

Texas subsides, frowning, undoubtedly trying to think of a way around this new obstacle.

"Besides," Chuck says, and crosses his arms, affecting a tone of lofty dignity that's strongly reminiscent of his Lord Vanquisher voice. "…you can't just have my prosthetics. I dunno what you meatbag humans think is 'rude', but us superhumans are very private about our personal tech."

There's a moment of pure silence, and then Mike snorts and he and Chuck are both laughing. The other three catch on just a second later and then all five of them are laughing, longer and harder than the joke really warrants. Everything is funny after the grimness and tension of a couple minutes ago.

"I'm tellin' you," says Mike, when he finally gets his breath back. "…'How not to offend your cyborg best friend'. Write the book, dude."

"Cyborg Etiquette," Julie says, and spreads her hands in front of her as though looking at the sweeping glory of the theoretical e-novel cover. "By Chuck (Chuck), Actual Cyborg."

"You gotta have a last name to write a book," says Texas wisely, and frowns. "—yeah. Pretty sure mom said so one time. If you don't got a name you're breakin' the law."

"You can be a Chilton if you want," Mike offers, and nods in satisfaction. "…hey, that sounds pretty good. Two 'Ch' names in a row."

"I have a last name," Chuck says, and punches Mike's shoulder. "Shut up, dude. I'd have to go hunt it down I guess, but it's gotta be in the records somewhere."

"Okay," says Texas. "I figured it out. You just gotta make me some robo-arms."

"That's the first thing you said!" Chuck sounds agonized and on the edge of another laughing fit, both at the same time. "And all the reasons I can't do that are still reasons I can't do it, dude!"

"He's not gonna leave you alone about it," Dutch says, with the weary certainty of a man who has heard a thousand different plans for a hundred different machines and vehicles and has learned to resign himself to the inevitable. "Make him somethin' shiny, he'll forget about it for a bit."

"Hey!"

"Chapter one: don't hack into his eyes," Mike is listing off, counting on his fingers, "—it's rude. Don't call him a robot, that's really rude."

"No overrides," Julie says, a little pointedly, but with good humor. Mike winces a little. "Just don't do it. But if it's an accident, it's polite to apologize."

"Don't ask for his blueprints," Chuck adds, as Texas argues with Dutch over top of him. "—don't ask how much of him is metal. Or where." He grimaces—Mike's eyebrows rise.

"I didn't do that," he says, and then it clicks. "Oh. Oh, holy crap, did he seriously—?"

"He totally did." Chuck's head tilts—he's rolling his eyes, if Mike had to guess. "I think he—"

And then the lights abruptly cut red. Mike is jumping up before he even thinks about it, before the siren even starts to wail. It's been weeks since Kane attacked, and there's been plenty of drama since then but some part of Mike has been on edge for this ever since the second they beat the last wave of bots. The other Burners are already on the move, rushing for their cars and taking off with spitting trails of exhaust.

The signal is coming from miles away—five or ten minutes away, even at Mike's lead-footed pace. Mike has time as he drives to cool down from the immediate wave of adrenaline that hit when he heard the sirens go off—time to settle into that rushing, relentless frame of mind where everything is too clear and moving slow and fast at the same time. The adrenaline high is amazing.

Chuck doesn't seem to agree, but hey. Mike's driving pretty fast. Anyway, he's still managing to type and control three different screens while he freaks out, so he's got it under control.

Actually…

"So if your brain's a computer, can't you plug straight into Mutt?" Mike takes a corner at breakneck speed—Chuck makes a strangled noise, clinging to his seat. "So you don't have to type or anything."

"I-I—I'd have to have a neural jack, they never put in aaaaAAAHHH! MIKE!"

"Is that a thing though? They make those?"

"They're a theory!" It's a high-pitched squawk—Chuck's eyes are fixed on the road while his mouth is apparently on autopilot. "—they never made it work, it's—too dangerous—!" A sharp, panicky yell as Mike launches Mutt around a curve, almost horizontal. Mike, who has basically learned to tune out the screaming parts, just nods thoughtfully.

"That's cool though!"

Chuck makes a wordless noise that might be agreement or might be oh god we're all going to die in fiery destruction. Something like that.

"They're in the stadium," Dutch says, and a sonar pulse makes Mutt's chassis tremble as Dutch throws it out—four, five, six bots at least. "Mike, there's always kids in there—"

"Chuck, I need a way in."

"Gimme a second!" There are ancient blueprints spread out wide across Chuck's screens, flickering as he scrolls past them. "Okay. Oh man, okay, Mike?"

That's the I know what we have to do and I hate it tone of voice. Mike reflexively kicks Mutt up a gear, ready. "Hit me with it."

"Found you a weak spot, but you're gonna have to blast through." Chuck takes a steady breath and then goes on, talking fast, "—but if we aim too low we wrap around three-foot-thick concrete blocks and if we aim too high the stadium comes down on top of us—"

"I'll take it!" Mike spins the wheel. "You got that, guys?! Let's go!"

---

Everybody is still jittery and worked up when they get back to the hideout, covered in gravel and dust and more than a little bit singed. Halfway through the fight the Mama's Boys showed up, and after that everything went to hell. One of their bright pink hotrods slammed Mutt out of the way to rope a bot and almost rolled her—Mike shot out one of their tires, the roped bot got loose and latched on to Mutt's hood too close to shoot, and after that everything turned into kind of a blur.

After a raid like that, everybody needs to unwind again. Mike and Texas vanish to spar. Chuck vanishes into his room with a box of scraps and a welding kit, looking drained, Julie packs up to head back to Deluxe and Dutch grabs his tools and buries himself in his most recent modifications.

He's been working for what feels like a couple of minutes, but is probably more like hours, when somebody comes in.

Dutch is always ignoring people going in and out—he's right there by the cars, anybody who wants to get to the cars has to come past him—so he doesn't bother to say anything. Whiptail is tricky to modify because he worked so hard to keep her silhouette clean and smooth and adding something on risks messing that up and taking forever to fix, but Dutch relishes the challenge and once he's focused on his car it's going to take more than Mike tooling around in Mutt's engine block or Texas cleaning up Stronghorn's battered chassis.

And then somebody clears their throat, quiet and uncomfortable.

"…Dutch?"

Dutch jumps a little bit, pulls up his mask and turns around. Chuck is standing behind him, hunched in on himself nervously.

It almost feels like there should be something different about him now—some kind of sign, some way to tell. But he looks exactly like he did before anybody even suggested the word "cyborg". Nervous and skinny and all legs.

"What's up?"

"I just need somebody to look at—" Chuck stops, starts again. "…I've been…improving stuff." He shifts uncomfortably. "…y'know. The stuff I was…built with. So, I mean—nobody knew before so I've been doing it myself, but since you…" he waves a hand awkwardly. "…since you know now, I've kinda hit a wall and, uh…"

Dutch sits up a little straighter, pulls his mask off and sets it to one side. "Yeah," he says, "Okay."

"I'm not bad at the physical part but it's not really my thing, I—I'm a programmer, not a mechanic—"

"Okay, yeah, totally." Dutch is already wiping off his hands, putting his stuff away quickly. "Sounds good."

"—I mean, if you're busy—"

"Are you workin' up to ask me if I want a look at your one-of-a-kind super-advanced experimental prosthetics or what?"

Chuck stops in mid-sentence, caught off-guard. "…uh…yes?"

"Oh, sweet." Dutch stands up and grins wide. "Absolutely. Yeah, I'd love to."

"Oh." Chuck stammers for a second and then smiles the same crooked smile he always does when somebody compliments him unexpectedly. "—okay! Cool. Uh…it's pretty messy, it's just a first prototype, not—"

"That's the best kind of work to look at though," Dutch says eagerly. "Seriously, I didn't wanna bother you to look at 'em but if you've got something you want me to look at…" he trails off hopefully.

Chuck is turning flattered, flustered pink. Dutch clears his throat and sits back.

"…if that's not weird," he says. "Just sounds really cool."

"Yeah, sure." Chuck settles down, dangling his legs into the empty space of the garage. "Uh…here."

Dutch comes over and sits down next to him, and Chuck winces, flexes his fingers and then turns his hand over and spreads his fingers.

The upgrade is a port about the size of a quarter, set smoothly in the skin of his palm. The reason for Chuck's wincing is pretty clear—the skin around the port is twisted and weirdly distorted. Under the thin skin of his wrist something is glowing blue-green, like luminescent veins.

"Whoa." Dutch takes Chuck's hand cautiously in both of his, flexing the wrist, staring at the port. "Is this…an energy cannon? You put an energy cannon in your arm?"

"Well…I mean, it's way, way smaller."

"Whoa."

"I don't have to do the whole…" Chuck mimes the action of drawing back his slingshot. "—so if I have to use it it might not set off a bot's motion sensors and if I don't have room, y'know, or something…the recharge time isn't as good, and I haven't figured out how to make it less…creepy-looking? But it's going okay."

"You couldn't fire something like your bolts for your slingshot out of this though." Dutch pokes cautiously at the weirdly split skin. "Opening's way too small, you'd burn all the skin off your palms."

"That's the other thing I wanted you to look at." Chuck pulls his hand free, breathes in deep and flexes his fingers. A targeting screen pops up, sniper-scope precise, flashing calculations and adjustments. "…hubcap, over there by the wall."

Dutch squints. The hubcap doesn't look any bigger than a penny from where they sit, lying bent and discarded where it must have rolled away from the garage. "Seriously?"

Chuck's arm jerks. Eye-searing blue-green light flickers across the garage like a shooting star, and the hubcap flips into the air in a burst of neon light and clatters back down. Chuck hisses and scrubs his palm on his jeans.

"Couldn't do that with the old version," he says, with more than a hint of smugness in his voice. "I mean, the other one would've blown it apart, but that's just if it could hit it, y'know?"

"Less powerful, more precise." Dutch turns Chuck's hand over in his, fascinated. "Like a sniper rifle instead of a laser cannon, huh? How's the range?"

"Uh…'bout the same. Little bit shorter?"

"Huh." Dutch taps the metal with a fingernail, fascinated. "Hey, did you just install this? I never saw this before, dude."

"The slingshot needs a trigger." Chuck stares at his hand, concentrating; the port in his palm dissembles back under his skin, as seamless and invisible as his slingshot. "I'm trying to make it so this one just takes the command straight from my brain."

"Okay," says Dutch, who's still staring at the place where the port used to be. The cut has sealed shut again, leaving a slight welt of pink scarring in the pale skin of Chuck's palm. "—don't take this the wrong way, I know what they did sucks and everything? But that's really cool, man. Wish I could customize myself."

Chuck blinks and then grins a little bit self-consciously and shrugs. "…yeah, there's…there's definitely a couple perks."

"So what you need's a way to compress more power through it and keep it from overheating," Dutch says, and frowns. "…how are you powering this stuff anyway?"

"Oh." Chuck leans back on one arm and presses a hand just below his breastbone. "Uh…y'know, just…super-experimental energy-conversion tech that could incinerate me any time. No big deal. Tanks my sugar if I don't eat and it needs a lot of calories, like, a lot, but the conversion rate—"

"Hold up." Dutch looks up sharply. "You tellin' me that's why you eat so much?"

"I ate a lot before they did that surgery," Chuck says defensively. "You know how hard it is to get extra rations in Deluxe? This thing actually works way better on Motorcity food than Kane's stupid throat cubes."

A shared shudder, one Deluxe kid to another. Deluxe tolerates the disgusting Kane Co. "food", but nobody likes it.

"It's like when Mutt's weapons system got too good for our gunmetal," says Dutch, and leans back , looking up at the twinkling underside of Deluxe far overhead. "…we oughta still have some of the metal we used lying around, 's not like you'd need much. You gotta fix how it comes out though. That's nasty, man. Looks like it hurts too, there's gotta be a way to fix that."

Chuck doesn't comment on that. Just rubs his thumb slowly over the almost-invisible scar on his palm. Over and over again, back and forth.

"…you guys don't think this is…" Dutch watches him steadily—Chuck swallows and shakes his head. "…it's not weird, right?" His hand rubs absently up and down his arm, tracing the almost-invisible scars. "I mean—it's fine, if you think I'm—"

"Don't even start," Dutch says firmly. "Man, you're still the exact same person, you're still the same kinda Burner-class weird you always were. You think a team with Texas on it is gonna care you've got more implants than we do? Maybe we don't count as cyborgs, but…" he opens a hand—a purple data screen pops up, hovering over his fingertips. "Most of Motorcity's gotta have some kind of implant by now. Heck, down here Texas is weirder than you, he's got the comm and that's it."

"Heh." Chuck smiles, startled. "Yeah, I guess—I guess so."

"Right?" Dutch claps him on the back. "Weird's normal in Motorcity, y'know? I mean…when we get Kane back for messin' with us, he gets an extra kick in the teeth for you, though. 'Cause—man, that's messed up. What happened to you. Sorry."

"Yeah." Chuck looks down and away—sniffs once and scrubs a hand hastily past his eyes. "…thanks, dude."

"No problem." Dutch pushes himself up and stretches. "…so I guess Nine Lives is giving Julie weird readings whenever she scans. You wanna go troubleshoot?"

"Oh—yeah, sure." Chuck stands too, twists and groans as his spine cracks. "…yeah. Mutt's making that grinding noise when we charge her boost again, I checked and it's not software conflict this time."

"I'll give her a look too." Dutch grabs his welding mask as they pass his worktable. "—you wanna go over your arm too when we're done? Should be interesting, I bet we can put some kinda shield in for your hand, protect you from the kickback."

"That would be awesome." Chuck's shoulders slump with relief. "The mechanical bit's not really my thing. I mean…I'm okay. I designed some of it, but some other guy did the nuts and bolts, hah. Oh! Oh, actually, we should get Jacob, too."

"Jacob?" Dutch sounds surprised—Jacob has his own projects, but usually he stays out of the way of the Burners and their work. "Why?"

"He, uh…he knew already. He's been my mechanic, down here."

"You got a mechanic already you should go to him," Dutch points out. "I don't wanna mess up your arms."

"Jacob doesn't know what to do with me either." Chuck waves it off. "And he's not as good with weapons as you are, come on." He hesitates, then clears his throat. "…I've got my blueprints. If that, uh…helps."

"I thought that was rude."

"I mean." Chuck opens and shuts his mouth once or twice, then manages, significantly red now, "—not if I'm showing them to you, if you're—I—listen, do you want to see or not?"

---

Sparring Texas is always an experience. Mike is light on his feet and really quick, but Texas is a tank and when he does land a hit it's brutal. By the time Mike manages to pin him down and finally get him to tap out, they're both soaked with sweat and more than a little bit bruised, and some of the constant flood of adrenaline has worn off. Mike pulls Texas up—pulls him in for a rough hug, suffers the friendly, bone-aching punch on the shoulder he gets in return, and then they go their separate ways to hunt down one of the hideout's rickety showers.

By the time Mike gets out of the shower again, the hideout is apparently empty. If Texas went driving, Stronghorn's probably gone—Mike throws his towel around his neck and wanders vaguely toward the garage to check who's home.

When he gets through the door, the first thing he sees is that Stronghorn is definitely gone. She's a big car, and the red underglow makes her pretty eye-catching. The second thing he sees is Jacob, Dutch and Chuck all bent around something on Dutch's worktable, muttering together. It's not exactly an unusual thing to see, but usually when all three of them are in the same place it's a car that they're gathered around and Chuck is either standing back and typing or sitting inside running diagnostics. Mike veers off from his intended course toward the garage and wanders toward the huddle at the work table instead.

For a second, what he sees doesn't register. Chuck's arm looks weird, kind of thin and wrong-colored, but Mike almost keeps walking until a sudden, sharp pulse of bright blue light flashes down Chuck's forearm and flares in his palm and Mike stops and looks closer and then stares.

Chuck's arm is opened up, neat and clinical, bloodless like a split seam from the center of his palm to the inside of his upper arm just under the shoulder. Under his skin, silver-white muscle fibers gleam soft yellow in the light of Dutch's worktable lamp. Chuck is poking at the weirdly reflective, pale silver tendons in his wrist with something that looks a lot like a scalpel, looking a little bit queasy but a lot more at ease than Mike would be if somebody peeled the skin away from his arm.

ROTH chirps right by Mike's ear. Everybody jumps—ROTH, apparently not noticing, comes whirring over to hover by the table as well and drops a white roll with the Kane Co. "K" on the side next to the battered Motorcity tools on Dutch's table.

"Mike!" says Chuck, and abruptly pulls his arm close to his chest, hiding the stripped muscle and tendon. Mike is ludicrously reminded of the way he yelps and hides behind the shower curtain when Mike forgets to knock on the bathroom door, and for a second he almost laughs. "Hahaha—Mike, hi!"

"What…?" Mike gestures broadly at the table, the Deluxe tools laid out, and the three of them huddled around Chuck's arm.

"They're helping me, uh…upgrade something."

"He came up with it though," Dutch says, like this is really important to get right. He's got another Deluxe tool in his hand, turning something small and silver-white over between his fingers. "I can't take credit for this stuff, man, it's pretty sweet."

Okay. Totally normal, not weird at all. Mike steps a little bit closer, curious despite the lurch in his stomach at the sight of the open skin and exposed muscle. "…can I see?"

Chuck looks surprised, then confused, then something like embarrassed, and then he sheepishly unfolds from around his arm and lays it back out on the table.

The split in his skin is clean and neat, faintly pink around the edges but bloodless. Mike stares unabashedly for a few seconds, then glances up and sees Chuck looking at him with that strange, tense set to his shoulders. Waiting. For what, some kind of…judgment? For Mike to call him a freak and walk away?

"…doesn't that hurt?" he says instead. "Why isn't it bleeding?"

"The skin around the incisions…" Chuck hesitates, chews his lip and then tries, "…okay, imagine there's, like…tiny little…"

"It squeezes off the blood vessels when he keys in a maintenance session," says Jacob shortly. "They set it up to turn off sensation from that skin and all the muscles when he's got it open, too, which is more than I'd figure Abraham was willing to do."

"Try fitting this in," says Dutch, and puts down the thing he's been turning over in his hands. "Right there."

It's a tiny plate of white metal, slightly cupped. Chuck takes it carefully, turns it over and slides it onto his palm, fitting it neatly onto the pad of his thumb. He bends his thumb, touches the tip of each finger to it in quick succession; the plate flexes a little with the movement.

"That oughta do the same thing your slingshot does, dissemble and set itself up on the surface again," Dutch says. Chuck taps a finger against the metal; it looks like nothing but a flat plate, but a screen pops up. "Synched?"

"Hooked in," Chuck mumbles, and types something with his working hand. "…synched."

"Tech up there has changed so much since I was puttin' bots together," Jacob says, and picks up one of the Deluxe tools from the roll ROTH brought over. "—thanks, Roth."

ROTH beeps and salutes, then reaches out to poke cautiously at Chuck's arm. Chuck jumps, then cautiously offers his hand—he shivers all over when one of ROTH's "hands" touches the artificial muscle.

"So—wait." Mike still can't quite manage to take his eyes off the way the skin peels back from the muscle. "What are you doing, though?"

"Adding another weapon system," says Chuck. "That's the slingshot." He slides a finger between artificial muscles carefully, exposing slivers of darker metal striped with circuitry. Mike swallows. "And…here's the conduit for the new upgrade." A thin silver channel, covered in barely-visible lines of neon blue light. It runs through the band of artificial tendon on Chuck's wrist and sits in his palm in the center of the silver-white plates Jacob is now carefully attaching with what looks like a tiny soldering iron. "Okay. It's hooked up and it's not sending up any flags in the system, so I guess…let's give it a shot."

When he pulls the halves of the skin together again they close like they were never separated, leaving nothing but a pale, hairline scar. Dutch whistles, low and impressed. Jacob looks slightly pained, but doesn't comment as Chuck bends his arm and his wrist carefully, then wiggles all his fingers.

"…makes my hand feel kinda heavy," he says, and spreads his fingers wide to poke at his palm. "…looks okay, though. Okay. Target?"

"Hit Kane." Dutch points—one of Texas's punching bags is standing abandoned in the corner, with a slightly ragged picture of Kane taped to it at head height. "Right in the nose."

The metal plates form in the same slightly creepy way the slingshot does, pieces assembling themselves, snapping into place on his skin. Chuck breathes in once, slow and deep, sights down his arm, and then fires.

The paper with Kane's face on it flutters high in the air and then drifts down, burned through. Chuck breathes out and turns his hand over; the palm is still lined silver. The port in the middle glows and then fades.

"Wow," he says, and grins. "It worked!"

"It worked!" Dutch throws an arm around his shoulder jubilantly, victorious. "Awesome! Try puttin' it back."

Chuck's fingers twitch. The port and the shield around it vanish again smoothly, leaving nothing but faint, pink seams where they were.

"Whoa," says Mike. Chuck glances back at him, grinning.

"Pretty cool?" He sounds kind of nervous, like he's still worried he's going to scare Mike off. Mike wraps his arm over Chuck's shoulders too, squeezing him tight instead. His hand rests on Dutch's shoulder—Dutch glances up at him and grins.

"Awesome."

Chuck lights up and it's so worth it. "Yeah?"

"Totally." Mike pokes at the palm with the port in it—there's no trace of the metal, just that almost invisible scar. "Wow."

A thundering roar cuts off whatever Chuck was about to say—Stronghorn comes roaring back into the garage, flickers and goes dark as Texas turns her off and pops her open. To Mike's surprise when the top of the car flips neatly open, Texas isn't the only person climbing out. Julie slides down Stronghorn's hood and lands lightly on her feet. Texas vaults out too, shoves his hands in his pockets and wanders around the car to say something to her, too quiet to hear.

"Hey!"

They both look up as Dutch strolls over to the edge of the ledge overlooking the garage. "Yeah?" Julie calls back.

"Where were you guys?"

"Driving!" Texas crosses his arms, striding over to glare up at them . "What's it look like we were doin'?" and then, before anybody can actually answer, "—what are you doin' up there?"

"Trying things out," says Dutch cagily, and grins back at Chuck as Jacob, Mike and Chuck wander over to look down into the garage. "Thanks again, by the way."

"Yeah," says Chuck, "no problem."

"Trying what out?" Texas squints at them. "…hey. Were you—?"

"Whatever you're gonna say," says Jacob firmly, "—I'm gonna go ahead and say no."

"I was just poking around in my arm," says Chuck, and elbows Dutch. "Quit making it sound weird!"

"I didn't!" Dutch doesn't bother to pretend he's not laughing. "I didn't say anything!"

Everybody drops down, one at a time, and the organized chaos of a comfortable Burner argument wells up as they all come inside and settle into the lounge, spreading out to start up video games or cards or to read. Jacob ducks around the counter and starts stirring something on the stove that smells weirdly earthy and looks kind of like a pot full of mud, listening to his kids argue with an expression of profound contentment on his face.

"I'm surprised you're still here," Julie says to Chuck, during a brief lull in the conversation as Dutch fiddles with a loose plate on ROTH's side and Texas jogs to the kitchen to bother Jacob for food.

"What?" Chuck, who's been staring at his hand and flexing his fingers carefully, glances up, distracted. "Why?"

"It's four."

"So?"

"…so…it's a Friday night?"

Chuck's mouth drops open. "It's what?!"

"What?" Mike sits up, startled by the sudden volume of Chuck's voice. "—what's up?"

"It's Friday!" Chuck is scrambling upright—he has to shove Mike's legs off his lap to get upright, and Mike stands up too, disgruntled and still confused. "Mike, come on! Friday nights, remember? I was supposed to be on the battlefield fifteen minutes ago!"

"I'll pass tonight," Julie says, as Chuck digs around and yanks his shoes out from under the couch, fumbling them in his hurry. "Hey Dutch, Texas! Do you guys wanna go RPing with Chuck?"

"TEXAS NEEDS HIS CALORIES!" Texas's voice echoes out of the kitchen. Dutch waves a hand vaguely, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth, frowning at ROTH's plating.

"I'll go!" Mike pushes himself up. "Come on, bud. Let's go save a kingdom."