Chapter 14.

Danny wasn't sure what woke him up, but at some point he had become conscious of his surroundings. He raised his eyelids, gazing into the shadowy room.

Slowly but surely, the world came into sharp focus, the tiny sliver of light falling through the curtains lit the room in soft hues of pale blue and green. It was one of the more subtle things that came with being half ghost— even as a human, his eyes required virtually no light to see.

Sam was lying on her side and breathing quietly, the relative silence interrupted every few seconds by Tucker's periodic rasps. She had pulled the blankets down to her waist, where they draped off her slender form. Danny closed his eyes, but the familiar wooziness and lack of thought didn't come. He just wasn't sleepy anymore.

Danny heaved a sigh and propped himself up on his elbows, surveying the dim room. To his right, the skylight cast a square of cool light across the tatami mat. He looked up at the silhouetted metal frame and realized it was unlatched. Odd. Had he been the person he was over a year ago, this revelation probably would have creeped him out, but right now it merely inspired curiosity.

Danny pulled the covers over his head to repress the blaze of light as he transformed and turned intangible, letting the blankets fall through him. Soundlessly, he slipped up through the clear pane and into night air and light pollution.

Sitting at the edge of the roof was Atomu, staring out at the city's flicking radiance. Danny froze and slowly started to descend, praying he wouldn't notice.

"Hey, Danny."

"Uugh."

He stepped off the side of the dark window, glancing off across the half-lit circle of the roof as Atomu looked over his shoulder. "Does nothing escape you?" he muttered.

"Honestly, you're fine as long as you stay intangible. Sound doesn't bounce off you when you do that… it's odd that you can still speak and make contact with your own skin in that state, but so is how you can still see when invisible. I'm guessing they're both just a ghost things."

Danny scratched the back of his head awkwardly. "Uh… yeah."

Atomu expression softened, and he turned away. "I'm sorry… I talk too much. You've been itching to ask me questions all day, haven't you?"

Wow. Nothing really did escape him. "That's a definite yes," Danny responded dryly.

Atomu slapped a hand on the space next to him on the edge of the roof. "Sit down. This is going to take a while."

Danny compliantly walked over, sitting down and letting his legs dangle over the fifty story drop. Over a year ago, this would have frightened him too, but it was amazing what the ability to fly did to the fear of heights.

Atomu was staring at some indefinite point on the horizon with a blank expression. "Danny, you know how I told you your paranoia was unnecessary? A few minutes ago, I realized I'm a hypocrite."

Danny wasn't sure how to respond to that.

"So ask me something."

"Oh." he said, "Uh… look, I suck at wording things. Just tell me…" he gesticulated wildly. "…Everything. Everything would be a nice place to start."

"That would be 1974."

"Oh. And?"

"In 1974 Toby was born to Dr. Tenma and Hoshie Tenma. Hoshie, the mother, died two years later due to heart troubles."

"Wait— Toby is Tenma's kid? He—"

"I am not finished," Atomu forcefully interjected, a note of pain rising into his voice.

Danny fell silent.

"Tenma was a very work-oriented man, and spent most of his days away at the Ministry. He barely paid any attention to Toby. However, at just the age of nine, Toby died in a car accident. It was instantaneous— a cervical fracture from whiplash. One of Tenma's colleagues was near the accident and immediately called Tenma upon recognizing the boy. Tenma was heart broken, and in a fit of madness he somehow managed to transport his son's body to the Ministry and transfer the majority of his memories into electronic data before complete brain death. The paramedics had to physically drag out Toby of his arms, in the end." Atomu hesitated, glancing at Danny's horrified expression before continuing.

"Tenma was Director, back in the day, so he basically had the entire Ministry under his thumb. He garnered a massive amount of funds, and using his genius for cybernetics and artificial neurology, he created the most advanced piece of technology ever created of that time."

"…ho …holy shit." Danny said, realization dawning.

Atomu smiled weakly. "I guess I don't have to tell you that robot was me. Granted, I looked a bit different back then— more like a robot. You could see my joint lines, and I didn't even have real hair, it was more like a couple of black spikes. The Ministry's upgraded me several times since then."

"You— have his memories? You have the memories of a dead person?" Danny practically yelled, still trying to grasp it.

"I'm not done yet."

"What the hell more is there to say!"

"Aren't you curious why Tenma isn't in good terms with the Ministry anymore?"

"Oh."

"Tenma was only happy with me for about a year. He soon became frustrated that I couldn't grow and mature like a human boy."

"That's kind of dickish," Danny commented, frowning. "Did he start ignoring you again?"

"He sold me to a robot fighting ring."

Danny paused. "WHAT?"

"You were following me, right? That huge robot who was in the downstairs workshop is Zog, one of the robots who fought in the ring. He got out 10 years back when the AI robot rights were passed, but I was freed when one of the human girls working at ring took pity on me and snuck me out. She couldn't stay with me, though, and I was left on my own. Still innocently hopeful, I returned to the Ministry in search of Tenma. I found him. He promptly dismantled me and burned down half the Ministry building."

Danny made a face. "He's not sane."

"—And he was promptly fired from his position as Director for mental instability. Ochanomizu took up the position of Director after him, and he found my deactivated body during the fire damage reconstruction. He repowered me at the first opportunity. But— when I woke up… I had no memories; Tenma had deleted them. I was restarting life. So Ochanomizu gave me a new name, after my atomic energy unit."

"Atomu." Danny said weakly.

"Yeah."

In the distance, a rocket shot up, exiting the troposphere in a crackling column of light. Danny watched it vanish from sight, nervously drumming his fingers on the ledge. Beside him, Atomu quietly stood up and walked off towards the skylight. Danny scrambled up, asking "So wait, what about Uran?"

Atomu turned. "Uran was made much later, by Ochanomizu. He was basically trying to create a robot at my level of mental intricacy. I ended up getting her as a Christmas present a while back."

Danny frowned. "A little sister as a Christmas present."

Atomu laughed. "She's not actually that bad— she's a whole lot more mature than she lets on."

They were wandering off to the side now, Atomu walking and Danny drifting along the glowing ring of the hallway's clear ceiling. Occasionally they passed one of the lit skylights that speckled the rim of the building.

"I was wondering… I'm not even sure if you know the answer, but… if you were designed after a nine-year-old kid, why did Tenma make you so freaking strong?"

"Ah. Obviously, he didn't want me dying again."

"Really? That's all?"

"I know, right? Kind of like squishing a bug with a military-grade laser cannon. Luckily I have a productive use for it nowadays."

"So…" Danny said, scratching his head, "You don't remember anything before you were reactivated, huh? Your time with Tenma or as Toby?"

"I do, actually. Tenma attempted to delete those memories, but he had made my brain with such human-like complexity that all it did was temporarily break the synaptic connections allowing me to consciously access them. The connections reformed after about a year."

Danny stared at him blankly.

"I had retrograde amnesia. I got better."

"You can get amnesia? Just how humanlike is your brain?"

"Very… I was the first with this type of brain, which can experience a full range of emotions and has thought processes similar to a human's. Of course, now the Ministry has caught up with Tenma and it's become very common and popular with the public, as humanlike robots are naturally easier to relate with. Though… there's still a load of political debate over how genuine those emotions are." Atomu got a solemn look across his face. "Danny? You phrased you last question like… 'My memories as Toby.'"

Atomu stopped walking, the glow of the corridor softly lighting his features from a low angle.

"I'm not Toby. I never was, and never will be. I have his memories, but they're not mine; they're his, and he died 22 years ago."

Danny felt the awkward silence crawl across his skin as he tried to come up with something to say.

"…Sorry."

"It's fine," he said, resuming his walk, "I just wanted to be clear."

"No! No, really!" Danny exclaimed, "What's happened to you is really horrible, and I should have never made you bring it up. It looked like it was really painful to say."

Atomu looked back at him. "You didn't make me."

"I'm still sorry," he said, defiantly crossing his arms.

Atomu stopped again, scrutinizing him. "You—" he paused, raising a hand as if to point something out. He then seemed to relax, his hand dropping to his side.

"Danny. You don't have to apologize for—"

"I don't care. It seems necessary."

A slow smile crept across his face, and he shook his head in amazement. "There are so few people like you. Fine. I accept your unnecessary apology."

A few yards in front of them, a skylight popped open and Sam stuck her head out. "What the blazes are you two doing up here?" she called.

Danny touched the ground and ran over, helping her up onto the roof. "How'd you reach the ceiling latch?" he asked, still gently clasping her hand.

"Oh, a chair. I woke up a few minutes ago and couldn't fall back asleep. I also noticed that I had been abandoned."

"What about Tuck?"

Sam rolled her eyes. "Tuck doesn't count, Danny. Besides, that delicate flower had long since moved to the couch."

"Really? He only lasted about five hours," Atomu commented.

Sam looked at the boy as if she hadn't realized he was there. "Oh, yeah, and think Ochanomizu and what's-his-face are still yammering away."

Atomu shrugged. "Higeoyaji will probably leave at some indecently early hour of the morning," he said, glancing between the two taller people with an odd sort of expression on his face. "I should probably go bother him to leave now, in fact. If he wants to go home and sleep before Tenma arrives, he doesn't have much of a timeframe left to do so." He walked past them to the skylight, calling "See you in the morning," before slipping through and courteously leaving it slightly ajar.

"Wow," Sam remarked, raising her eyebrows. "He's pretty observant, isn't he?"

"You have no idea," Danny sighed.