The little dog snuffled out from under the canvas flap, and she raised her scruffy head and perked her folded ears to listen to the crackle of the fires and torches, the drip of distant water, the hiss and echo of voices all gathered softly in one place.

Something was happening.

Krysa wagged her little tail and trotted off between the tents with a delicate click of claws on the stone, past the dim campfire and the hanging paintings, the sculpted goddess and her flowers, the murals drawn on the floor and the walls, the half-empty boxes of spare parts and bags of Thirium, the littered vacant spaces where shelters had been bundled up and taken away, the networks of wires and tiny lights that hung crisscrossed from the stalactites and cast a merry shine upon Jericho. She weaved between moving androids, dodged out of sight of playing children, lifted her chin when someone whistled but continued on a more important mission.

She nosed inside one of the biggest tents, where a gathering of androids all stood quiet around a single bed. Krysa pushed through the forest of legs, and a few androids stepped aside to let her pass; the way was finally clear and the bed came into view.

The little dog wagged furiously. She stretched up on her hind legs and pressed her paws on the bed, whining high and hopeful.

"Hello, Krysa!" Chloe greeted her with a soft and gentle smile. She laid a hand on top of Krysa's head and scratched behind her ears - but Chloe otherwise didn't move at all. She kept her body perfectly still while Josh soldered repairs inside her open skull.


Markus sat in a chair at her bedside, his arms on his knees, a worried blue spin at his temple. "Can you tell us what happened?" he asked with no little urgency. His processors whirred with empathy for Chloe's state, reminded of his own experience in the scrapyard - she wouldn't have made it back alive except only for her force of will - but this time the humans' fear was not to blame.

This time a new threat had appeared on the horizon.

Without moving her head, Chloe studied him sidelong, her eyes shining blue. Her smile faded, her fingers still buried in Krysa's coarse fur. "Of course."

Chloe looked up to all the faces that watched her.

In all their eyes she saw the same silent fear.


Chloe pursed her lips, and she looked down at Krysa with a click of her tongue. The dog wriggled then jumped scrambling up on the bed to lay down on Chloe's legs.

"I left Elijah alone at the rally," she told the room, and she let her eyes drift closed. "When the shooting started, and everyone … panicked and ran …"

She opened her eyes again, but only enough to see the little dog curled peacefully on the bedsheets. "I went back to find him."

Her mouth opened again. For a moment no sound came out.

"There's a tracker on his phone, and I saw that he was moving too fast down the street, so I went back for the car and I followed him. He wasn't answering, so I knew -"

Tears brimmed in her eyes. Chloe's voice crackled; she paused to breathe. Josh's soldering iron hissed inside her head.

"Another car hit mine and totaled it. I got out, but they grabbed me -"

"The Faceless Ones?" asked Alice with a squeak. She curled her fingers in the sheets at the end of Chloe's bed, her eyes wide and shining.

Tears spilled down Chloe's plastic face. Her heart ached to know that even little Alice knew what they were.

"Yes. I erased Jericho's coordinates and encrypted my memories, and I took out a few of them but there were too many to fight. I was overpowered. They broke my trackers and communicators, they downloaded everything and they left me in a dumpster."

Luther shook his head. "We're all grateful you survived. We might never have found you."

"After my run-in with Connor, Elijah developed and installed a play-dead protocol for me. I … kind of made him do it, actually." Chloe wanted to smile … but the thought of Elijah felt like hot daggers in her heart. "They were fooled into thinking I was in shutdown."

"So …" Kara hesitated to speak, her face troubled, her arms folded protectively. "If you encrypted your memories … how do you know they're after me?"

Chloe pressed her mouth to a trembling line. Her eyes shimmered.

"As they immobilized me and forced a download of my data, I … thought of you. I didn't mean to, it just happened, and by the time I realized they'd already recorded it … I just wanted to protect you so much that I … I'm so sorry …"

Kara took Chloe's hand between her own, and Chloe stared up into the mild face that seemed so familiar yet so strange. As if they had never meant the world to one another. As if all of it had only been a dream.


Josh snapped a new plastic panel into Chloe's skull, and he laid a comforting palm on her head. "Okay," he breathed. "You're all done. Just reboot and you should be good as new."

A wave of relief washed over the gathered company. They each grasped Chloe's hands with heartfelt gladness, then slipped away out of the tent so that Chloe could finish her recovery in peace. Kara, too, extracted her grip from Chloe's, and with a small smile she followed the others.

Only Josh stayed at her bedside, and Krysa asleep on top of her … and Luther, who sat stiffly in the corner with a hard drive clutched between his big hands.


"Alice!" Simon jogged to catch up with her, a hopeful smile on his face.

Alice turned around; she clutched her stuffed fox tighter and stared up at him with big silent eyes.

Simon could see the troubled shine in her stare. His own gaze softened. He knelt before her, a hand on her shoulder. "Chloe's going to be okay," he promised.

"But the Faceless Ones are out there," Alice whispered. "There was … a whole army of them … and even Miss Chloe couldn't fight them, and even Connor was scared of them, and -"

"That whole army was destroyed." Simon watched her face, firm and unblinking. "There are just a few left, and we'll take care of them. Markus and North will be sure of that. Do you trust them to do that?"

Alice paused. She curled her fingers in the soft fabric of her stuffed fox.

Simon's gentle smile didn't waver. "Here." He twisted around, and with a quick fumble he drew a hard drive out of his back pocket. He held it out to her.

"What is it?"

Simon took her hand and laid the hard drive into her possession. "It's yours."


Chloe awoke, and she watched her boot sequence complete diagnostics - one thorough scan at a time - and each beeped green with perfect results. She breathed, overwhelmed with relief … before the guilt, like a disease, crept once again into the back of her mind.

"Chloe?" Luther loomed tall over her bed, uncertain and wincing in apology. "I hate to ask you this while you're still recovering, but -"

"What is it?" Chloe studied his face, and her eyes dipped to the hard drive he held before him. It was a little damaged, bent in places, stained with old Thirium. Like something he'd dug out of the scrapyard.

"It's Kara's."

At those words, Chloe's LED spun and flashed yellow. Her eyes grew wide.

"But the memories are corrupted," Luther explained quickly, before Chloe's hopes could raise too high. "I know you're the most advanced out of all of us, so I hoped -"

"Yes." Chloe immediately reached out for it, a staticky choke in her words. "I'll do it. I'll do all I can."


o - o - o - o


Alice remembered the trees.

She remembered the shimmer of the orange-yellow leaves all around her, the twist of the branches under her feet, the apples plump and ripe between her small hands.

She remembered dropping the apples, one by one, down between the boughs, where Luther caught them in a big basket full to the brim with red and green and gold.

Only his name hadn't been Luther then … and she hadn't been Alice.

She remembered the farmer, who was so very thin and bald and always smiling. She remembered helping him pile apples in baskets for the market, and pumpkins and squash and potatoes and honey from the wood-box hives.

She remembered a human boy that was taller than she was, and he would take her aside and tell her to do his chores for him, and Alice did a good job until his mother found out.

She remembered his mother, who tried to smile and laugh as much as she could, though her eyes were always heavy with tears.

She remembered the day the farmer didn't come home.

She remembered the bills piled high on the counter, printed on pink paper and stamped in red.

She remembered sitting by Luther in the truck, looking out over a yard full of rusty cars and twisted metal, while money was paid and titles were transferred.

She remembered watching Rose's truck drive away for the last time, and Zlatko's ominous words:

"Welcome home."