Up...and down. Up...and down. Two watched the little green line rise and fall. The colors. He had never seen colors like that bright green that left a shiny trail behind it in a spike, then a small spike, then --

A flash caught his eye. Bright light from above blinked off a silver sensor trailing off his hand. He stared down at it and widened eyes as far as he could, plucking the metal disc from his hand. The bright sparkle danced across the sensor's edge. Back and forth, and back and forth, and back again as he turned it over and over and over and over. Before he noticed what he had done, he was holding the sensor in front of his nose and squinting and feeling his eyes burn from their sharp tilt as he stared at the disc's bright edge.

A dull white glove plucked away the disc from his rubber-covered hand, and Two glared up at a pair of narrowed brown eyes.

"Don't take off your sensor." The short man glared back.

"But it shines in the light." The words in Two's mouth rolled off his tongue, and his lips drew back in a curious smile. Shines. It made air rush over his tongue and slip from his mouth with a hiss, like Otto said Two had often done when annoyed. He had to get used to this speaking concept, as he had said very little since the humans took him out of the strange fluid, hours ago. Being human was strange, though not that bad once he became used to those odd things the scientists called breathing, tasting, and smelling.

"I don't care if..."

The words faded into a distant hum in Two's ears, and his attention drifted to a small square attached to the man's shirt. A little spark of reflected light drew Two's fingers.

"What are you--"

Two pinched the spark with his nails and twisted his fingers and detached the metal piece. He had been shiny and silver once, like the square, but that did not matter, as there was nothing he could do now. "What is it?"

"A pin. Now give it back."

Pin was a new word, and Two squeezed the square between his fingers and mouthed the word. Pin. Pin. What an interesting word. Pin. "I like it."

The man brought his face closer to Two's, his lip wrinkling in a sneer. Two stared; humans could do such strange things with their skin. "Listen, you little lab rat. You're ours now. It doesn't matter what you like, or what you want. You want something, you have to go to Crowley, and she only concerns herself with real humans. That doesn't mean you. She's sick of you four already."

Real? Does my form not look real? Two twisted his lips, trying to mimic the human's look of scorn, but the man's dark brows pushed wrinkles into his forehead, and Two let his own face relax

"I am a real human now. Do I not look like one?"

The man sighed and groaned at the same time, and Two resisted the impulse to try that himself, as the sound amused him. His sensors had once picked up only vibration, not sound.

"No, you're not." Dark brown fingers pulled out a small notepad from a hidden pocket in the human's white coat. "Our project identifies you as an artificially accelerated human cell culture, driven by a non-sentient computerized algorithm."

Two stared. What did all that mean? He had never paid attention to Otto's science words unless it dealt with fusion, because he had been created to listen to fusion words and hold fusion in his claw that was now a pair of hands that was no longer--

"Did you hear anything I just said?"

"What?"

The human tightened his fingers into fists, his eyes darkening almost as if they had glowing sensors behind them that had just dimmed. "Do you not have a brain in that thick head of yours?"

"Three always said that I needed repair, but I never thought so." He paused to think about what he had just said. Three was separate from him? Yes, he had to be now. Or she? Was Three a she now? Confusing. Why couldn't humans be simpler?

The man, obviously annoyed for some reason, tensed his jaw and thrust out a hand. He grabbed Two's fingers and pulled, trying to pry them open, but Two gathered his legs beneath himself and lunged into the air. His outstretched hands pushed his assailant into the nearest wall, and the heel of one palm struck the man's head, just above and to the side of his eye. A limp human body crashed to the floor at Two's feet.

Two smiled -- he had stopped the thief. Served him right for treating him like something that couldn't think, like that computer. Two turned over the man's pin and saw a long, sharp piece of metal that glimmered with a silvery spark. If he only had a place to put the pin, he could find more valuable things, like those wide, shiny discs that humans gave to other humans in return for useful items. Of course, why a human would want to give up their discs was a mystery.

The sensor monitor's beeping caught his attention, as the beep was now a soft hum. Still clutching the pin, he wobbled to the monitor and poked at the dull gray squares arrayed before the screen. Keys, he reminded himself. Otto had often told him of computers, those machines that could think only when humans told them to and that did only what humans wanted them to do. Did this computer look back at Two, watching him from its silent sensor? Did it know he was a machine, too? Could he somehow free it, so that humans couldn't run it anymore, and so it could help him find shiny discs?

Two banged the keys with his fingers, and a black and white image replaced the monitor's blinking green light. He scowled at it and pushed more keys.

A familiar sight appeared, snaking across the screen in torrents of shining silver and yellow. The serpentine form ended in a three-pincer claw. Two stared, his brows rising in a strange reflex twitch of the face. So, that was what he had looked like before the humans stole him and put him in a strange body. He had never bothered to look at himself before; he had mostly looked at the ground, or a wall. One and Four could watch shiny objects all day, but no, Two had to stare at the ground.

Though he enjoyed the new sight, he paused to think. Why was he human? Easy. Someone had placed him in a human body. So why had they done that? That was the real question. Perhaps the servant machine could tell him something about his transformation, and where the rest of the unit was, because he wanted the unit together again.

Two brought a hand to his neck. What now? His breathing quickened to counter his closing throat.

"So, you're a little violent. Ah, well. He's only unconscious."

Two leaped and whirled, nearly tripping over his own feet, and his breathing fell back to normal. A human with curly dark hair clutched a gun, like the police carried at the bank, and pointed the weapon's end at him.

"Violent?"

"Well, of course. You knocked him out." The woman gestured to the pin's former owner.

"He wanted to take my pin."

"You are Two, correct?"

"Yes, and who are you?" Two twisted his lips and tongue, testing out each word before saying it. The muscles in his face turned his tongue every sort of way, and his mouth buzzed when he spoke. How did humans get anything done, when they had shiny metal to enjoy and all sorts of words to say?

The woman frowned. "I am Dr. Crowley, the transfer team manager, but who I am doesn't matter. Sit down in that chair." She pointed to a black, padded seat next to another monitor.

Two obeyed, watching a circle of metal jangle on Crowley's wrist. It flashed in the light, shifting this way and that, the smaller gold bits clinking. The band was loose around her wrist, and with her small hand, perhaps he could...

"Are you listening?"

"What?"

Crowley glared at him and clenched a fist, her long, colored nails clicking. The nails were shiny on top, but underneath, they were dull. "Two, I asked you a question!"

"You did?"

"Don't play stupid with me, you half-human tin can. Tell me about the other actuators."

Two gave her a blank stare; after all, what could he say? Others? He had always been a unit. He knew them; he was them; that was all. He couldn't find words to match the aura of any mind. How did one describe raw thought? "We are a unit. There is nothing more to say."

"What are they like? What about Three?"

Two raised and lowered his shoulders, hoping that the gesture meant that he didn't know the answer. He extended his hand and grabbed the shiny gold band around Crowley's wrist, then jerked his arm back and snapped the thin metal. Crowley snatched his hand and held out the gun, and Two shifted his eyes until they stared uncomfortably at the hole pointing toward him.

The little hole meant death. He knew that and sat still.

"You pathetic excuse for a supposedly sentient being. I would shoot you now were you not more useful than fresh blood on the floor." Crowley brushed the end of the gun along Two's forehead, flipping aside a strand of pale hair before she placed the weapon back into her coat. "Now, give me my bracelet or I'll make you wish you were dead along with your master."

"Dead." Two would be dead.

Otto was dead.

No, he was not dead. Two was not dead, and so Otto was not dead.

Crowley leaned toward Two. "Ah, so you do have a sense of, how shall I say it, family, perhaps? You care for others. More than what I expected in a machine. Not very suitable for our first test."

"Care? Test?"

"Ah, forget the test. But you do care." The woman twisted a dull coil of hair as she spoke. "Caring means that something matters to you. When a person matters, it means you're more human than we expected."

"The sun matters." Two glanced at the band -- bracelet, was it? -- in his hand. It glittered much like the fusion sun, the same color and almost glowing the same way, its smooth loop like the prominences he still wanted to reach out and touch, pushing them this way and that. "The fusion matters. I care about that. I do not care about you."

"You care about Octavius."

"He is my creator. He does matter to me, but the fusion is above him. Without him, there is no fusion." When Two raised his eyes from the bracelet, he spotted Crowley writing on a small sheet of paper. "What does this mean to you? Why are you writing?"

"Why do you ask so many questions?" Crowley stood and tucked the paper into her coat, her skin never catching the light, as dull as her hair. She was a dull person, and Two did not like dull. "Your attachment to Octavius is a problem. You will stay here for the night, and tomorrow we will try to take care of that. How does your body suit you?"

"It is strange, speaking and walking and sensing as humans do, and wearing this rubber human clothing."

"No pain? We need to know before our trials."

"I do not know. What is pain like?" After hearing Otto tell him about pain, Two had just become confused, as pain seemed to have far too many meanings, most of them irrelevant to him.

"Then you don't have any." Crowley jerked her chin. "Good. Testing will go more easily. Tonight, you stay here. Do not try to leave; this room is guarded. Destroy anything, and we'll gun you down. Am I clear?"

"Yes." Two watched Crowley turn and depart, her coat hanging blandly, not even catching a bit of the still air and rising into a light-scattering flutter. Apparently, she had forgotten her metal band, but she would most likely remember it when she returned after the night.

One night. How long was a night? Otto had once told him that the entire human day was divided into a shorter day and a night, but day had been short when the ground was covered in shining fluffiness and long when the plants turned very green and filled with those bunches of colored puffs called flowers. Did Two have a long time, or a short time? Was the ground white or green?

There were no windows, but a small machine on the wall read 8:29 PM. Two's internal timekeeper was gone, but his memories told him that the numbers meant later in the human day, and his night would presumably be over when the numbers read between 5:00 and 6:00 AM. A few minutes of thought gave him eight hours and thirty minutes, minimum, and nine hours and thirty minutes maximum, and he had to escape before the shorter time passed.

Two spent the next three hours walking back and forth across the room. The computers were shiny, and he watched the reflections in their metal shift as he moved, but when the lights went down, nothing but the numbered machine glowed. 4:00 AM, it soon read, and Two still could think of no way to escape. Crowley would surely be waiting for him.

Then, he remembered the pin, as shiny as usual beneath the light of a computer screen. Two lifted the pin and glanced toward the unmoving man that Crowley had left to awaken of his own time. If he could leave behind his rubbery covering and put on the man's clothes, he could find Otto or another of the unit without humans noticing.

Two turned the man over, feeling the weight push on his arms and wishing for his former strength, when nothing had seemed too heavy to push. He searched his stretchy covering and found a few straps in the back that loosened the suit when he detached them, and then he climbed out of the rubber and kicked it aside. The air rushed against his skin, brushing fine pale hairs on his arms and sending a shiver through his body, and Two yanked the unconscious man's coat and shirt off.

He threw the clothes over his body, then placed on the white pants, leaving the man with only a strange white cloth across his hips that Two had not seen fit to remove. Two glanced at one of the computer monitors and saw his dim reflection in the shiny metal. According to the way Otto always wore his clothes, Two had placed his clothing on properly, though each piece was somewhat short for his body. He smiled at himself and then strode to the door, trying to walk in a straight and unwavering way, as humans did.

No matter how hard Two pushed, the door didn't open. He reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a small plastic rectangle with a dark strip along the back. Now, how was a flimsy piece of plastic going to help him break down a door, unless there was a very weak area in the door?

Perhaps there was. Two ran his hands along the door, hoping that his fingers could feel vibrations like his sensors once did. The door did not vibrate, but his hands slid easily along the metal with a smooth sensation that drew heat from the tips of his fingers. Then, one of his nails dragged over a gap.

A slot.

Two inserted the card into the thin gap in the door and pulled it out, hearing a tiny flit and seeing no response in the door. He turned the card over and tried again and again, until he found the correct angle and the slot beeped with a high squeak that made Two raise a hand to his ear and rub the small hole there. The door slid open, and he pocketed the card.

A tall male human fixed Two with a puzzled gaze as he walked past, but made no aggressive move. Two smiled again, his lips this time widening to uncover teeth. His plan was working. He would find his unit. He would follow his purpose, both fusion and his new purpose as a human. And, most of all, he would get some shiny discs.

He stopped a window and pressed his hands against the glass for a moment, feeling their smoothness and the cooling sensation on his fingers. Beyond the window was a cylinder that caught even more light than Crowley's golden band, and Two traced the edge of the cylinder with his eyes until he followed a wire from the top down into the center.

A red glow flashed to life beside the wire.