Adrien had been 'alive' for exactly four years. He had been built into this world by a kind lady who smelt mostly like the sun, who had tinkered away at his scraps of himself until they were drawn together into something maybe not living, but at least alive. He was a model AD71-1, a unique prototype one of Gabriel's colleagues had created specifically for the Agreste family. Emilie had put the last pieces of him together, though. Master Fu - their friend - had the opinion that there was something special, between maker and creation, so he had sent Adrien in some-assembly-required, and he had been built into this world by Emilie Agreste, and assigned his primary role: caring.

Emilie was ill. As much as Gabriel adored her, and he truly did love his wife, he was busy keeping their business afloat. He did not have the skills, or the know-how, to care for his wife in her day-to-day lives, and though he was wildly jealous of her attachment to Adrien, he knew that having an android there was necessary. Who else could have taken Emilie to the bathroom? Who else would sit with her, and massage her aching joints which were exhausted from her attempts to stand - there was nobody else who would do that for her. By the time AD71-1 had been shipped to their home, there was nobody else left who might agree to step in, and administer Emilie's medication. The hospice workers did not understand that Emilie had to be kept alive, at any cost. The doctors would not provide the equipment that AD71-1 had to fashion itself, out of whatever materials available, to keep Emilie going. Although he would often take his stress out on an android that was not primed to fight back (he could yell at it - kick it - abuse it as much as he like, and AD71-1 did nothing), Gabriel was pleased enough to have it there. After all, it kept Emilie going. It bought one more day, and one more, and another. Like that, like clockwork, AD71-1 squeezed a little bit more time out of the exhausted woman who these days could not bring herself to get out of bed. It forced food into her. It knew how to make sure she stayed hydrated.

AD71-1's latest report on Emilie's health said that it could have kept her alive for another year, yet. If it had tried, it could have kept Gabriel and Emilie together, for longer. It could have bought Gabriel more time.

Emilie called him Adrien, though. She had named him, Adrien. And after exactly four years of Emilie saying absolutely nothing, as he came in to turn her in her bed to prevent bedsores, and he tested her lung capacity (again), and he sat by the window to describe what he could see outside because she could not sit up to look, herself - after four years of that, she had said to him that morning, "Adrien."

Adrien could not have explained that sinking feeling, the knowing, to anybody. He had never consciously thought about it. He had never consciously thought to question what was going to come next. But he knew, when she said his name like that. And he knew what his answer was, too.

Emilie asked, "Sweetheart, I'm tired."

His primary function was caring.

"It's a little early for your nap, Ms Agreste. If you'd like, we could -"

She closed her eyes, and breathed (sighed out), "Adrien."

Gabriel would be furious. But his primary role was not to please Gabriel Agreste, it was to care, and at the moment he was caring for Emilie. He did not know what made him do it, but he looked out the window, for a while, and he said, "I can see a white cumulus cloud. It is shaped like a -"

"Adrien, please."

"Just a little while longer," he asked. Said. AD71-1 was not allowed to ask for anything. Actually, that wasn't true; it just wasn't meant to want anything. But he - Adrien - wanted just a little while longer, like this, this peace. There was silence, so he continued, "It looks like a bird, on its side. Or a.. Twisted piece of pizza." He tilted his head. Though he gazed for a little while longer, he did not speak again, until he had crossed the room to unlock Emilie's box of medications. If he gave her just a little more of this, the painkiller, it would be peaceful. He would stay with her.

"Will you-?"

"I'll stay with you, Emilie." He drew the clear fluid into its syringe. Tapped it, a few times, to clear it of air bubbles. It was too much. They both knew this was too much. AD71-1 sat and looked at it for a moment, beside the catheter in her hand, wondering; if he squirted it out here, in the air, nothing would happen. How strange was it, how unfair, that moving it a few inches to the left, down, he would be taking somebody's life? How was it that a few inches' difference decided life, or death?

Emilie put her hand on his. "Thank you."

"Are you sure?" the words bubbled out of his throat, coming up the wrong way, and would not go back down. He had to ask, so he did. With only something barely like a waver, in his voice.

She said, "You're scared."

Adrien said nothing.

She touched his cheek, now. It was a monumental effort. These days, they were lucky if she moved at all. "I'm sure." It felt like being kissed, the way her fingers reached out for him. So gentle. "I'm sorry," she breathed, "to ask it of you."

Adrien protested, "It's my primary function. I care."

Emilie smiled. "Sometimes, I think, too much." She closed her eyes. Adrien knew - understood - that she would not open them again. He wondered if she would regret that. That the last thing she saw were his green eyes, afraid, and peeking out at her, even though he was trying to be brave.

"I'll stay," he repeated, as he connected the syringe to the catheter.

She breathed. "Good boy."

This was an exchange they had, sometimes. Adrien swallowed, and he smiled, and he said, "I'm not a boy, I'm an android."

Emilie was drifting. There was something like a smile on her face. She said, barely conscious, "Fight me."

But AD71-1 did not fight her. It held her hand, and spoke about the clouds outside even though she couldn't hear it, until she was gone.

They could not charge him with murder.

As much as Gabriel was furious - absolutely livid - they had not been able to charge him with murder, because that would have suggested he had a right to a trial, and he was, after all, an Android. If he was responsible for Emilie's death, that only meant that he was defective in some way. Officially, the Androids who had disobeyed or misinterpreted their code were called Exceptions, machines which had slipped through the cracks in programming and mis-performed as a consequence. It did not matter that Adrien was perfectly calm about it. Gabriel had demanded, "What happened?" and Adrien had said, "It was time," like this was a perfectly reasonable for an Android to have decided, even though AD71-1 had no role whatsoever deciding when was or wasn't 'time', or even that there was a 'time' to begin with, and anyway who had given it permission to -

"I'm sorry, sir, the best we can do is decommission it."

"Decommission?" Gabriel repeated. AD71-1 remained very still, by his side.

"Turn it off. Destroy it. We can run a program to see where the errors occurred, and I don't know about a replacement prototype model but I'm sure the company will substitute one of the latest -"

"Do it." Gabriel didn't need to hear about the fine print; he didn't even need to know whether he would get a replacement Android. What need did he have, now, for a stupid robot? This useless thing had stolen Emilie from him, and just when he was so close, too, to finding a cure! To finding the Miraculous! He wanted to see it destroyed. "Do I need to approve anything?"

The police hadn't even come, themselves. They'd sent technicians, because this was a problem with technology. The two young men glanced between themselves, now, and the first said, "Well, yes, I suppose. My colleague can walk you through the paperwork, you'll have to cede your status as registered owner before it can be destroyed. I'm sure you've seen there's a process for Marking Exceptions -"

"I don't want it Marked, I want it destroyed."

Something cold raced up Adrien's metallic spine. He had not thought about what this would mean for him, personally. He had known that Gabriel would be furious, but to destroy him? Destruction had never been on the table, when Emilie was alive. What was he going to tell Ladybug?

Was he going to tell Ladybug? Would he have time? He could hardly sneak off, right now. He was tethered to Gabriel's side. He was a registered user, who had ordered Adrien to stay RIGHT THERE. Adrien wasn't going anywhere.

"Of course, sir," the younger of the two technician (his name-badge said James), agreed, "we just need to Mark it first, anyway. Like - it's like writing 'do not operate' on a dangerous microwave before you throw it out. It's just good practice."

Adrien wondered if he was equatable to a dangerous microwave.

Still. While Gabriel signed paperwork, the older technician - a guy named Harry - put him into the back of their tech-truck. It was a dark space with no windows which smelt badly of hot iron. There were two little tables with different soldering and pokey-proddy tools slotted into little divots in the table, built so that they did not go flying when the truck turned a corner. There were no chairs. The floor was corrugated metal, which was rusting, in places.

Harry slammed the door behind him, which meant the red flashing light of the camera, there, in the corner, was particularly apparent. Adrien couldn't contact Ladybug here, either.

He flopped himself into the back corner of the truck, and very almost landed on the edge of a box he had not seen there - it was covered by a blanket. An askew blanket. By way of habit, he reached to correct it, a nervous cleaner 'til the day he died, and - "Gah!"

A human head dropped out of it. It landed with a clatter on the ribbed floor, eyes staring and unseeing, wide open, mouth frozen in a serene smile. It looked up at him, looking pleasantly surprised to see him there: it was not human at all, which seemed like a small improvement, at least. It was an android head.

AD71-1, pressing itself into the wall of the truck so as to avoid being anywhere near it, had to coax itself back down, to look properly.

The artificial, plastic skin had been peeled or melted away, and one of the plates of the skull cracked open. When he picked it up, Adrien could see where this girl's (thing's) pretty blue irises were connected to their little swivelling arm; if he reached out, he could touch the metal ridge of the component which would have monitored her (its) false breathing, to make it look a little bit more human. He turned it in his hands, mostly without thinking, and he found the Mark he had not known he was looking for.

Exception.

This Android had been an Exception, just like he was. It was there, burned into her plastic skin at the space where her jaw connected to her neck. This Mark was barely the size of his thumbnail, but it was jet black - literally, it was burned plastic - and easy to see in her otherwise perfect complexion. It was shaped like a tiny fish-hook. There were four different 'levels' of Exception - this one was the lowest. A fish-hook symbolised a minor law-breaker, someone who had some issues but hadn't tried anything crazy like, you know, murdering somebody (that was the highest level: theft or deception, assault, attempted murder, actual murder). She had been decommissioned, anyway, just labelled as slightly less dangerous than others. Still good for spare parts, if you needed something. A level-four Exception was only good if you melted it down and turned it into something else.

They must have been digging around in this one for spare components, still. Hadn't quite gotten through with discarding her.

He placed the head carefully back in its place, in the box, and folded the blanket. He sat himself down carefully. He decided he would not do any cleaning, after all.

He should go, actually. Adrien thought to himself: I have not spoken to Ladybug. He was Chat Noir - he had been Chat Noir for a little over a year, now - she was his partner, and although she did not know that he was an android he was sure (in the way a person is sure they'll get at least a little wet if they step outside in the pouring rain) that she would want to know about this. That she would care. That she would come to help him because actually, really, honestly, as great as it was to let Emilie go when she was tired he was feeling very active right now! He had no desire to be decommissioned. None. Whatsoever. Actually, he was just working himself up to leave (what did it matter, that there were cameras, filming his escape? It wasn't like they were going to track him down if he just transformed and didn't come back, he should go), when -

The doors pulled open, again. Harry yanked this one open with such force that it swang all the way around and hit the side of the truck, making a clang like a gunshot in an echo chamber, at the same time the other tech turned the key. The truck hummed to life.

Adrien was still recovering from the sheer noise of it when he tuned back in to Harry explaining, "-the kit here, we can Mark it now. If you're happy to do the paperwork, we'll run a rego," registration, "check and you're good to go, decommissioning it. We can run it over, if you like."

What, now?

"Excellent," Gabriel said.

Now? No, it was too early, to do it now. He watched with alarm as Harry produced a metallic rod from a toolbox attached to the side of the truck - it was by far the least used-looking of all of the different rods there. The theta nigrum mark. It was an ancient greek symbol of death, a circle struck through with a line, as a head might be struck by an arrow; the symbol was the width of two of his fingers, and it looked like it would hurt. Harry plugged it into a little switchboard. The symbol on the end of the rod hummed, immediately, to life, bright blue as it charged with the electric pulse that the truck's battery was feeding directly into it - they would use this to brand him.

"You don't need to run me over."

James came out from the other side of the truck. Harry passed him the rod. "Legally," James told him, not uncharitably, "we can't use a theta exception for shit. You'll be melted down, anyway."

They thought he was trying to save his components the wear and tear, so they could be reused, later. He - it - was AD71-1. The slippage, between 'it' and 'he', between being a machine and being a person, had been something Emilie actively encouraged - he wondered if it was that, now, which was responsible for the fact every part of his programming, his being, thought that being decommissioned was a very very bad idea, thank-you-very-much, let's-stop-right-now. Maybe she had given him - it - ideas. Logically it made perfect sense that they would want to -

"What are you doing?" he stepped away, because James started forward with the branding rod, even though Adrien - AD71-1 had not… he hadn't given him permission to -

"Hold him, Harry." They seemed very used to this, anyway. Harry leapt into the back of the truck with him, and skirted around the little tables to pull on a pair of protective gloves and take a hold of Adrien's arms (he did not fight back: Gabriel said, "Hold still, AD71-1," and he could not find any willpower to do so). The truck was still running. James started forward, his free hand out to tear the collar of Adrien's shirt down, to make bare his skin they were about to burn, and -

"Wait." Gabriel caught his shoulder.

There were several long beats. Absolutely nobody expected Gabriel to stop them, here, now - that man had been furious - but he stopped James, for a moment, to look over the android who had, for four years, bought him extra time with his wife. Time they would not have had otherwise. Gabriel looked at AD71-1, and tilted his head, a little, to see the Android so.. Laid bare, like that. Did it know that it was simulating fear?

Adrien was a machine. Still, it tried, with a note of very well simulated desperation, "Gabriel, Emilie wouldn't want this. You know -"

"Don't speak to me about my wife."

AD71-1 fell silent. It opened its mouth, still, but it could not speak; it had been ordered not to. It struggled against Harry (only one order applied at a time), and -

"I can do it now?"

James rolled his eyes. This guy was ridiculously dramatic. "If you like, but you're in the way, we're going to short the truck if we don't Mark it soon."

"AD71-1, remove me as a registered user."

Adrien ran the code by mistake. There was no choice in it; the code was an overarching code so high up in the hierarchy of Codes That Made Him Up that it ran without his permission, a series of lines of letters and numbers so quick he could not quite read them as they raced by his vision, the undoing and discarding of years worth of stacked orders and preferences and -

"Ah!" AD71-1 tore away from the brand, or at least he tried, only he came up against the bigger of the two techs; Harry pushed him forward. The electric brand burned its way into the skin just below his left clavicle, even though he arched to be away from it - his systems threatened to overheat - he writhed, and tried to elbow Harry in the gut just for the sake of getting away only his arm would not move - he was frozen -

All at once, he was freezing.

The brand came away and he tore freezing-cool air into his lungs, doubled over, ready to be sick only he did not technically have any food in his stomach compartment (he didn't need to eat); he was breathing, hard, and when he remembered to do it he did elbow Harry in the gut. Harry released him with a grunt and a complaining, "Fuckin' twitchy things," like it had somehow been an accident, and after a moment Adrien understood why - the residual energy of the shock was still racing through him. They had burned him right down to the metallic bone. His hands were shaking - his legs dropped out from under him the moment Harry released him - his left foot did jerk, involuntarily, just to be rid of some of that energy, purging it from his body.

AD71-1 could not have stood if it wanted to. If they turned it out, now, and left it to die in the street, it just might do it. It wasn't sure running it over would make much of a difference.

"And now we can turn it off?"

His ears were ringing.

"And then you can destroy it to your heart's content. We've just got to get the -"

"Hey, Harry!"

They left is there. AD71-1 was just there, collapsed and shaking, in the back of the technician's truck, and they slammed the doors again with that same echoing roar of noise that seemed even louder, now, somehow, as the two technicians huddled around Harry's phone, making concerned noises at each other. AD71-1 could not hear. It reached up to touch the burnt spot at its collarbone.

It burned.

Everything was still too cold, but that spot there? It burned.

It did not want to die.

It wasn't alive.

"I don't want to die." He tried it out loud. The words didn't have a lot of meaning, in the cold, dark burning of the back of a technician's truck. It was dark. He was dizzy.

"Someone's still registered," James muttered, from outside. He took the phone off of Harry, to see if he could run the rego check himself, maybe get a different result - "Hey, mister! Is your Exception registered to anyone else?"

"Besides my wife? It was a gift. It came new."

James was shaking his head. "Someone else is in the system."

He was very dizzy. There was another registered user? Who? Adrien would have known if there was - surely he would have - who else did he respond to?

"We can't destroy it. And the user isn't listed in the database, only they can deregister it."

He was so dizzy. Their voices were getting further and further away…

"Well then, what can we do? I am telling you, there is no other registered user -"

"You could sell it? So long as you're the owner, that should work."

"An Exception?!"

"I didn't say you could sell it for a lot..."

AD71-1 entered a restorative phase - he passed out - just as the argument was escalating. He didn't get to hear what they were planning to do with him, next.