Touma couldn't recall ever being as scared as he'd been on the bus to Harare. The feeling he was being followed had gnawed at his nerves from the moment the plane took off from Narita; once in Africa, he was an object of fascination for the locals with whom he could not communicate. A middle-aged man with a glint in his eyes offered to be his guide and translator, perhaps hoping Touma was of the tourist notion that one man could offer the keys to all Africa. His friendliness evaporated after six refusals; Touma wondered after another hour of staring if letting himself be duped might be worth it just for the distraction.

The bus ride had begun innocently enough, but with only half an hour left to Harare, they'd been waylaid by a jeep full of grim-looking men with machine guns. He held his breath—he stuck out far too much, there was no way they wouldn't try to take him, ransom him. He'd been a fool to come so unprepared, but he'd read the letter inviting him and let his hopes get the better of him.

Amateur mistake after amateur mistake that a European backpacker on gap year wouldn't have made. And now you're going to die, Touma.

The men forced their way onto the bus, scanned the seats with the fixation of men who knew what they wanted. They stormed right up to Touma—

—and kept storming past him. They shouted at two men near the back of the bus who had started reaching for their waists. Muzzles trained on them; they held up their hands and let themselves be taken, wrists zip-tied behind their backs. And then they were gone—the guns, the men, the jeep all racing away down the road. The bus driver took a moment to collect himself, and resumed driving. The other passengers looked at Touma in disbelief.

I'm right there with you, he thought.

It must, he told himself, be sheer coincidence that the man who waved to him at the bus stop looked so much like one of the guntoters from before. Pure coincidence. As was the jeep.

"Doctor Hikari," he said, voice deep but oddly gentle.

"Ah, um, I—"

The man grinned and clapped Touma on the shoulder so hard he nearly sent him sprawling. "Sorry about earlier. Your friend will explain things."

"My friend? You mean—"

"Shhh. Do not say his name. Even here, we should be careful."

Touma stepped back and looked the man over. "What proof do you have that you're with . . . my friend."

The man seemed pleased to be asked, and fished in his pocket for a crumpled scrap of paper, shoving it at Touma. It read 'Sorry I never let you beat me at Galaxian.' That was Albert's handwriting, no question.

"All right."

Once in the jeep, Touma looked in the back, not sure what he was afraid he'd see but finding it empty. He made a brief attempt to engage the big man with small talk, failed. Their surroundings grew shabbier, the buildings squatter and wider. What must have once been a burgeoning industrial district now served as slums; several times they had to stop to let people cross the derelict roads. They pulled up in front of what looked to be a cafe, was led to a door in the back.

"Doctor," the big man said, knocking on the door. "Your friend is here."

Muffled words were exchanged behind the door. Then, "Come in."

That voice! Touma held his breath.

The door opened onto a room lit by one pale flourescent tube; a boy sat on a steel table with an arm outstretched, his mother stroking his tightly curled hair, a man sat on a high stool as he picked at a thread that seemed to come out of the boy's arm with heavy tweezers.

The arm, Touma realized, was a prosthesis—the thread a bundle of synthetic muscle fiber. The man was Albert, now as prematurely worn as Sergei.

"Now," Albert said, replacing the 'muscle' and closing the panel on the prosthetic, "next time the panel won't shut for any reason, you come see me, okay? We don't want anything harmful to get into the works again, right?"

The boy nodded, stared at the prosthetic hand as it opened and closed. He grinned and jumped off the table, running out past Touma who was holding back a sob. The mother took Albert's hand and nearly shook him off the stool before running after her boy.

"Sorry to keep you waiting." Albert sighed and drew himself up off the stool, walked up to Touma and threw his arms around him. "Glad you could make it. You're earlier than I expected."

"I came as soon as I got your letter." Touma paused, noticed that at some point they'd been left alone. "That man who met me at the bus stop—"

"Sorry about that," Albert said, "You were being followed; those two men my friends pulled off the bus were . . . well, I don't know who they're with, but it doesn't matter, they got dropped off at the border."

Touma wasn't sure where to start with that information. Albert nodded, sympathetic.

"Look, we have some catching up to do, but before anything else, there's something I've been wanting to show you."

They went out through the back door into a cramped alley; though it was midday, they were wholly in shadow as they walked, observed only by a few tired-looking men smoking cigarettes or dozing on overturned buckets.

"Who was that boy?"

"Just a boy from the neighborhood. Had his arm amputated due to some kind of infection before I got here. His was one of the first prosthetics I made. He's a good kid, but a bit reckless."

"And you do that for free?"

Al smiled. "Not quite free. Barter. I build and fix things for the people, and they've helped shelter me. The men that followed you are far from the first ones to come looking for me. They're not even the ones who got the closest."

The lines of worry and weariness were so deep on his face. Touma noted for the first time that his hair had gone almost entirely white, and his crown was nearly bare. He must have lost at least ten kilograms from his already slim figure.

"I'm sorry I didn't listen to you more," he said. "I was too—"

"Touma, don't worry about it. You, Sergei, and I: we each had to do what we thought was right. I'm just glad that they didn't hunt you like they've hunted me," Albert said, stopping at a heavy grey door to a rusting sheet-metal warehouse indistinguishable from the rest of its row. He rapped on the door with a peculiar rhythm, was met with a different one, and answered with yet another. The door opened with a slow screech, an ancient man with milky eyes nodding them through. "By the way, how is Sergei?"

"He's back in Russia." Touma looked over his shoulder to see the man lean his whole body into the door to slam it home. "He was hoping to work in the States, but he was denied a visa."

"Of course he was." Bitterness.

At the end of the short, narrow hall was a spiraling stairwell that led down into the earth, lit by what appeared to be old miners' lamps, stopping short of another heavy door.

"Ready?" Albert grinned. The door opened onto what was unmistakably a machine shop. The equipment looked dated, and certainly undermanned, but well kept. There were various cybernetic prostheses in the making, but also small robots not unlike the ones they'd been developing back at the Institute. "Welcome to my little slice of heaven."

"Al, this is incredible. How did you—I mean, just the cost alone . . ."

"I'm not going to lie, Touma. I had to do some things I'm not proud of to get here. But, well, they had us doing work I wasn't proud of back then, too, so I'll live with it. Come on, let me show you my pet project."

They walked to the far end of the shop floor, past men too focused on their work to spare them any attention. What looked to be various prosthetics lay on the furthest table—no, not prosthetics. They were not disparate parts, but all one assemblage, held together with a skeleton, covered in places with synthetic muscle fibers and in others by bundles of cable.

"Recognize him?"

"Our Proto Man," Touma whispered, a touch of giddiness in his voice. "You actually started building him."

"I've made pretty solid progress on the AI end of things, but I'm not a patch on you when it comes to the mechanical stuff, so this is a rough first pass. Just enough to have something to show you, really."

True, he could see areas for improvement, but Touma doubted there were a hundred people in the world who could have done better than Al's 'rough first pass.'

"I've been able to reach out to a handful of people who were fans of the leaks and learned enough from them to train up the guys you see here, but if the Proto Man project is going to go anywhere, I need your help."

Al was staring intently at him. Despite the years of privation working on him, the light still shone sharp in his eyes.

"I want to say yes," Touma admitted. "But I have to know one thing first. What are you really after? Building our robot, sure. But if that was all it was about, there are other places you could have gone with better resources. You're doing it here for a reason."

"You're right, of course." Al sighed, hopping up onto the table so that he sat next to the skeleton. "I came here because it was one of the only places where I wasn't within easy reach of someone our old bosses could tap to hand me over where I wouldn't be pressed into some warlord's service. But then I started thinking about what I really wanted to—" He blinked a few times, then fell silent.

"Al?"

"Look. One day, hopefully not soon, I'm going to die. So will you, so will Sergei. When we die, the vultures will swoop in, take everything we've worked for, and twist it. But then I thought, 'If I knew there was someone who'd stand up for what's right who wouldn't die, I could rest easier.' Our Proto Man could be that someone. I know this operation's rough right now, and there's a long way to go, but what do you say?" He stretched out a hand. "Partners again?"