Cain didn't remember laying down. Soft: bed? No, couch; he'd feel that in his back soon enough. His eyes opened slowly and he was staring at the ceiling of his office. The lights were off, both outside and inside window blinds drawn; glow slipped between from the hallway fluorescents, striping the floor. A blanket was draped over him. He groaned and sat up, registering the expected ache in his spine as he oriented himself and searched for the clock.

Why bother? I don't even remember when I passed out, he thought. Last he remembered, he'd been at his desk trying to parse progress reports on . . . what had it been again? Someone had been at his papers, sorting the mess he'd left into neat stacks. Someone had picked him up and set him on the couch after he'd no doubt passed out in his chair; someone had covered him with a blanket. He smiled to himself.

Oof, stiff. I must have been out for quite a while, he thought. Probably for the best; it's been a few days since I got any sleep?

He stepped into his suite bathroom and stood under the streaming hot water, letting it warm and loosen his muscles.

He'd lost a few days of sleep, but the whole of the past three months had been a mad dash for everyone at Cain-Doppler. With a ready supply of robots and parts, able staff both from TG and Sig's own firm, and X's knowledge, they'd managed to advance precision manufacturing several generations; as far as any records or X's own knowledge-base suggested, they were fast approaching parity with the most sophisticated techniques of the pre-Cataclysm world.

What he'd been working on came back into focus; with all their success, he and Sig had let themselves start to dream a bit, and they'd pulled a few engineers off the robot enhancement agenda to start designing an android of their own. The progress report he'd been reviewing called it a 'replicated android,' or 'reploid,' a distinction Cain had thought important to make; it would not be another X by any stretch. But it would be theirs. That thought banished the rest of the lethargy from his bones as he dressed and stepped out into a quiet hallway. Only one person was in their office. Cain checked the clock again: two in the morning.

"Good morning," he said, rapping on the man's door. He was one of Sig's guys, good worker, bit obsessive.

"Oh! Doctor Cain, good morning." He blinked his bloodshot eyes, furrowing his brow, checking his wristwatch. He puffed up his cheeks and blew out the air, deflating back into his seat. "Sorry. What can I do for you?"

"Go home and get some sleep," Cain said. "You don't look much better than I do."

"I'm just going to—"

Cain held up a hand. "The work will still be here later. Take the day off and come back fresh, all right?"

"All right. Thanks." He stood up and stretched.

"Any idea where Sig is?"

"Haven't seen Doctor Doppler since he went to Lab 2, so probably still there?"

"Right. Thanks for all the hard work."

He walked out into a night punctuated by the lamps spaced out along every path on the Doppler-Cain campus. Further out, Lusaka glimmered, a million-faceted diamond. Lab 2, on the other hand, was a squat box of reinforced concrete; not ugly, but prizing durability above the elegance of the rest of the city. Security waved him through the lobby and into the project spaces. Sig was just stepping out of one enclosure with four technicians flanking him, scribbling notes as he pointed to certain lines on the papers in his hands with approval or disapproval. He picked up the pace, hoping to catch him off guard, but one of the technicians spotted his approach and alerted his boss.

"Good eve—oops—morning."

Cain shot the technician a look that said 'Really?', but clapped his friend on the shoulder nonetheless. "Just the man I wanted to see."

Sig paused, waiting for him to elaborate. His eyes widened, he mouthed 'Oh,' silently. "That will be all for now, thanks everyone."

The technicians thanked him for his time and dispersed into various enclosures. Sig led Cain to his own personal office—the only executive suite in a lab building. No sign he'd ever used it.

"Are you doing all right? X said that you'd collapsed at your desk. I wanted to check up on you but—"

"Just overworked. Or undercaffeinated; either way, a stupid mistake for a man my age."

"One I'm probably repeating," Sig said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as he flopped into his chair. "I may just catch some sleep when we're done here. So . . . ?"

"Admittedly I was half-asleep when I was reading this, but it looks like our little 'reploid' project has hit a snag. Muscular systems. It's a materials constraint again, isn't it."

Sig sighed. "Looks like we'll have to set our sights a bit lower for now, there's just nothing we can make the skeleton out of that can handle that kind of stress yet."

"I don't like that that's becoming a running theme," Cain said. "What does X say?"

"That if we devoted all our personnel to it, we would still need about six years to become capable of designing the necessary materials, and another year to get up to mass producing them."

"Fuck. All right. So we go with the fifth iteration muscular system design. If it's good enough for our robot enhancement work, it'll do for this. Maybe if we can get a few reploids working on this stuff, we can shorten that timeline." Cain shook his head. "The longer the initial project takes, the more excuses Mkapa has to shut it down. I don't want this thing dead in the crib."

"Nor do I," Sig said. "By the way, I took an informal poll of the engineers on names, like you asked."

"And?"

"Someone suggested 'Gate' and that got a decent bit of popular support. A 'Gate' to the future."

"Someone suggested."

"Hey, I remained a neutral arbiter," Sig said, holding up both hands, grinning.

"Where is X, anyway? I thought I might find him here," Cain said.

"Oh, didn't he tell you? He's with Marty in the dormitory lounge celebrating."

"Celebrating what?"

"The end of her physical rehabilitation. She's up and about again."

"Ah, that's wonderful news."

Sig studied him for a moment, tilted his head. "If you don't mind my asking, what is it about them spending time together that bothers you?"

"Who said it bothers me?"

"Come on. I know you at least that well."

"You think she has the slightest idea how important he really is?" Cain said. "She joined us for the same reason Preston did: money. But X means so much more than that; our work means so much more than that. His time and energy could be better spent."

"She's a distraction, then."

Cain shrugged. "Isn't she?"

"Maybe, but is it our place to say?"

Cain looked up at the ceiling for a moment.

"If you like 'Gate,' then I'm fine with it. Tell the team. I could probably use some more sleep."

It was disappointing that even Sig didn't understand. It wasn't just about one project. It was about the way X held himself back. He knew he'd seen a mere sliver of what X could do when they'd escaped from the Exclusion Zone, and yet even that had been buried away since. Someone who thought as small as Marty would only make it worse. It couldn't be tolerated.

He strode out the way he'd come, not hearing the man at the security desk who called after him, something about 'Mister DeWitt' spotting something or other. He'd attend to it later. He stepped back out into the night, pointed himself at the dormitories and tried to plan what he wanted to say as he walked. There was a commotion in the distant dark; shouting. Preston, that gawping idiot of a boy, was rushing towards him for some reason.

A crackling report. Heat and pain. Cain's world went dark.