APRIL 3 2044

2:12 PM

It takes almost two hours total for Hamegg's clunky, beat-up old OCR to run a full-system scan on Astro, and when the data finally comes back, it's not pretty—the optics are currently hovering at less than one percent capacity while the audio processor isn't that far behind, which is about what he figured from everything Skunk told him, but it turns out that the kid's also blown a valve in his knee, busted a clamp in his elbow, ripped his shoulder completely out of its socket, run out of oil three days ago (—which is weird, actually, because the scan shows that he got a refill about two weeks back, and that'll usually hold a machine over for about a month, at least—), lost a quart of coolant so quickly that his radiator almost exploded and, just to put the cherry on top, he hasn't had a single freakin' update since last December, because Skunk is apparently a complete and total moron who doesn't care if his robots can function or not—but at least it's a definite that the loose, exposed circuits are the worst of it, and everything else can take a backseat until he's extracted all the used-up, worn-out wires.

Even with his steady hands and sharp eyes and trusty old pliers, it's a real hell of a job, and it goes about a thousand times slower than it should, since he's got to stop every five seconds or so just to scrape away the stiff, hardened crust of mud and muck with a dry cloth—he can barely even see what he's doing right now, flying totally blind, running on pretty much nothing but his own instinct and expertise, and he's just about ready to call Kusai up and give the idiot a piece of his mind, or at least tell him to clean his robots up a little before he dumps them on Hamegg's doorstep, because a practically naked kid slathered in grime is absolutely not in his wheelhouse at all, and—

Huh.

Okay, so that's—that's weird.

All these little rips and tears where the cables come out are only about as wide as a paper's edge—which is obviously way too narrow for all the cords to slip through the cracks like that, but the cords are slipping through the cracks, because there are literally hundreds on hundreds on hundreds of those razor-thin cuts, crossing and crisscrossing over each other again and again and again, until the kid's whole body is just a mess of uneven grids and wild gashes, thick trails stringing along his ribs, running up and down his legs, fanning out over his shoulders, streaking all the way to his back and twined around his neck, peeking out from under the cold iron of the KURI, and they're all—

—and they're all about as wide as Skunk's whip.

But that—that can't be right.

On some sudden, knee-jerk impulse that he doesn't even stop to think about, Hamegg lifts the cloth a little higher and scrubs the soft white cotton lightly over Astro's filthy face—it cuts a track, almost starkly clean, through the dark brown dirt to show off the pale synthetic skin beneath—and it's the exact same thing here, tiny hairline slashes on his cheeks and his chin and his forehead, in between his brows and right under his brows and—

—and on his closed eyelids.

Okay.

So.

Hamegg is pretty sure he knows exactly what made the kid go blind now.

And—look, he's patched up plenty of other robots who ended up on the wrong side of Skunk's live-wire whip sooner or later, because that's just the kind of crap that happens to the robots in the rings, and it's nothing new and it's nothing special and it's no big deal.

The problem here is that this is not the kind of crap that happens in the rings.

Yeah, sure, Kusai's got a temper, and that's not exactly a secret, but he's also got common sense (—hard as that is to believe right now—) and when he pulls out that lash, he always sticks to the robot's back, and he always deals out these careful and controlled and deliberate blows, steady and even strokes in perfect precise patterns that never overlap or overrun. And even when it's a robot like Astro, with soft and warm and almost-human flesh, he never hits them hard enough or long enough to break through the skin—too much external stimuli, especially painful external stimuli, can send their system into complete shock or even emergency shutdown, and Skunk knows that, which means he must have completely flown off the handle to give the kid a beating as bad as this. From the look of all these strikes, he must have been going at it for a long while—an hour or two, at least.

From the look of all these strikes, Astro must have gotten thrashed within an inch of his damn life—Jesus, the poor kid's bitten his lips into literal shreds from the pain, chewed through his own damn skin in his agony, and a sharp twinge of pity pulls painfully at Hamegg's heart, a crushing squeeze in the dead center of his chest.

The poor little kid has probably been through hell.

But it's—it's fine.

Hamegg forces himself to pull in a deep breath—forces himself to shake his head, to ease the death grip he's got on his pliers (his palms burn a bright, angry red) and he's got to remind himself that this is fine, this is just what happens to the robots in the rings, and it's nothing special, and it's nothing new, and it's no big deal, and it's fine, but—

—but it's a long, long minute before he can tear his eyes off that (—battered, dirty, cut-up, tiny—) face and get back to work.


OCTOBER 26 2043

7:33 PM

Astro can see his hands shaking—the jolts and shudders ripping through him like electric shocks, his fingers jerking and spasming with it, and the soft synthetic skin of his palms so sharply, starkly pale against the cold black metal beneath him—but he can't actually feel it.

Maybe these hands aren't even his hands—or maybe the neuroelectric wires between his brain and his body got cut in half or torn out or unplugged at one end or the other, or maybe he's not even in his body anymore, but standing outside his own skin, standing on the edge of himself, standing over himself and staring down at himself, a shivering sobbing mess on a cold leaden floor, his dark spiky hair and his bright red rocket-powered boots and his small shaking (—sharply, starkly pale—) hands, but he's not in there right now.

He's not sure he can be in there right now.

He's not sure he can ever be in there again. Not now that he—that he just—he just—and he couldn't say no and he couldn't stop himself and Skunk told him to—so he just got down on his knees and opened his mouth and—

He can see his own hands shaking, but he can't feel it, and he can't make it stop, because he's just not in there right now.

"Get up," Skunk barks, low and harsh, and the noise of it, or maybe just his voice, is like a railroad spike driving straight through Astro's brain, cleaving through his mechanical skull like soft, overripe fruit. "Get up." The shiny toe of a polished black shoe kicks at Astro's ribcage.

And he—he should tell Skunk that he's not in there, right? He should tell Skunk that he's up here, separate, disconnected, detached, floating away like a balloon, standing on the edge of himself and standing over himself and standing outside his own skin, that the thing on the floor is just a vacant old shell, but he pulls his hollow metal frame up on unsteady feet and he follows Skunk through the door and down the dark hall anyway.

It's a long walk—the corridor stretches on and on and on for what must be a million miles, and Skunk has a hand on his back the whole way. He can still taste the cum in his mouth.

He can see his hands shaking, but he can't actually feel it.

Skunk takes him into a narrow glass elevator (—his breath snags in the back of his throat when he sees how small it is, but he knows if he doesn't go inside on his own, Skunk will just tell him to do it, and then he'll have to, and that's worse, so he just clenches his fists and clenches his teeth and steps into the elevator—) and it carries them up and up and up to the top floor—it's a big, circular room where the whole ceiling is all clear glass, too, and he can see the night sky through it, stretched out above him like a blanket, so wide and open and all studded with stars, so infinite he could get lost in it, disappear in it, melt away into it, and Skunk would never find him again, and he'd be safe.

There are ten other robots in the room with him, standing about six feet apart, staring right at him with big, curious eyes—the last three at the end of the line look a lot like him, with their almost-human skin and almost-human hair, and that sleek silver one near the door looks like Orrin, except he's not all hunched over like Orrin usually is (—or like Orrin used to be, because he doesn't really do that anymore, now that Dad's being nicer and giving him days off and listening to him when he talks, and oh, god, he misses Orrin and Dad so much that his chest aches with it, and he just wants to go back home—)—

—and they're all—

—they're all chained to the floor with these huge heavy padlocks, hanging bolted at their ankles.

There's another DRD set up in the corner, enclosed on all sides in the same clean, clear glass as the ceiling—a small, see-through booth built seamlessly into the wall.

"Okay, here's the deal," Skunk takes a round white device out of his coat—it's about the size of a remote control, except it's only got two buttons, a big green one in the center and a slightly smaller red one right beside it. "I'm going to power down that collar of yours for a second, and you're going to do exactly as I say. Got it?"

Power it down? A sudden, bright burst of hope explodes in Astro's chest, and he grabs blindly for the KURI, cold as ice under his fumbling fingers—he already knows it won't work, and he knows it's stupid and borderline delusional to believe anything else, he knows it's hopeless and useless and he'd never make it before Skunk called him back, and he knows he's already been beaten before he can even try, but maybe if he just

"Don't even think about it," Skunk cuts in, but the corner of his mouth edges up in another one of his awful smiles, because he knows it's hopeless, too—he knows Astro's already been beaten before he can even try, too. "Don't try to get away from me. You hear that? Do not try to get away from me. When I shut off the KURI, just stand still right here until you've received further orders. Don't move until I tell you to."

And that's—that's really all it takes, isn't it? Even if the KURI comes off his neck right now, he'd still be completely and totally useless, helplessly imprisoned in his own software.

For the first time in his life, Astro wonders why the laws of robotics even need to exist.

For the first time in his life, he wonders how many humans out there use them like this.

Skunk hits the green button, and the KURI clicks off with a soft whoosh.

The quiet, incessant hum of electricity at his throat dies away into silence, and the dull ache in his temple fades out to nothing. The weak, numb, pins-and-needles feeling in his arms and legs lifts up off him like a veil. The constant pulse of pressure in his chest, right behind the Core, melts away like ice left out on the kitchen counter, and he can actually breathe.

But he can't do anything.

He can't fly away from this, and he can't even walk away from this because he can't fight off the big bright-red alarm bell in the back of his brain, screaming at him to stay still stay still stay still he told you to stay still (—and he wants to slice open his skull and tear his own brain apart to rip out the code Skunk installed so no one can ever ever ever tell him what to do again—) so he just stands exactly where he is, and he doesn't move an inch.

The night sky stretches out above him like a blanket. So wide and open and all studded with stars. So infinite. He could get lost in it if only he could fly. Skunk would never find him again if only he could fly.

He'd be safe if only he could fly.

Skunk goes into the glass booth in the corner to turn the DRD on—and maybe the walls aren't thick enough to block out the noise, or maybe he's got some kind of mic in there with him, because Astro can hear the click and buzz when the recorder comes on, and when Skunk talks, he can hear that, too, loud and clear like he's in the booth with him.

"Testing—subject 7517—weaponry."

And there's that number again—7517, and testing, subject 7517, LOR programming, testing, subject 7517, SAI programming, testing, subject 7517, weaponry, and the cold, rigidly logical side of his brain tells him to just forget it, ignore it, pretend he didn't hear it if that's what he's got to do, because he has bigger things to think about right now, and anyway, it doesn't really matter in the long run, does it? It doesn't mean anything in the long run.

A number isn't going to change who he is.

A number isn't going to change anything about him.

But Skunk has already taken his freedom away from him—taken his independence and agency, taken him away from his home and taken him away from the city that needs him so much, taken his mind and twisted it, taken his brain and reprogrammed it and rewired it from the ground up, but he can't take his name.

No one can take his name.

No one can ever take his name, because he will not let them—he lives in a body that's legally his dad's property, with a power source that's legally government property, and he lives in a brain all cluttered and crowded and crammed with someone else's memories of someone else's life, but his name is the one thing that's completely and entirely his own.

And no one can ever take that away from him.

"Astro," he says, loud and clear and firm—unflinching, unapologetic—and he holds his head high as the slow, steady pulse of the Core in his chest kicks up to a faster rhythm without the KURI to hold back the energy. "My name is Astro. I don't answer to anything else."

And he doesn't even know for sure if Skunk can really hear him through all that glass—maybe it doesn't go both ways, or maybe it's just his oversensitive, superpowered ears now that the KURI is off, but he doesn't care. He just needs to say it—he just needs to get it out of him. He just needs to remind himself that he's more than this—more than a number or a steady red light on a recorder. More than a code implanted in his mechanical brain. More than what this man put in his mouth.

Skunk stares at him for a long second that stretches into two seconds and three and four and five and six before he finally says, flat and cold as an arctic plain, "Robots don't need names." He turns pointedly back to the DRD. "Now be a good little machine, and shut the fuck up for once in your life."

And Astro can't say no.

And he can't say anything else either, not now that Skunk told him to shut up, so his mouth snaps closed with a quiet, definite click.

His own body doesn't even listen to him anymore.

His own body has been turned against him.

And he hates it for that—hates it for its betrayal, its surrender, its waving white flag when he wants to fight, its desperate inescapable need to do whatever it's told, and he wants to tear all his skin off and crawl outside of himself, crawl away from himself, away from this pathetic disgusting cringing spineless thing Skunk has turned him into (—this thing that just gets down on its knees and sucks the nearest dick all because Skunk told it to—)

"See? You're learning already." Skunk flashes him that awful smile again, all teeth and menace, before he pushes a big black button on the side of the DRD. "Now, do you see all the robots right in front of you?"

And he still can't say anything (—and he hates his body for its betrayal, its surrender, its waving white flag when he wants to fight, and he hates himself for believing Skunk, for falling for it, for ever getting in that stupid car—) so he just jerks his chin down in a silent nod.

"I don't need them anymore," Skunk says. "Kill them."

What? Astro snaps his head up to stare at Skunk full-on while his (metaphorical, nonexistent) heart turns over and over and over like a leaf in the wind, because this can't be what he thinks it is—kill them, Skunk says, but no one ever kills their robots when they know they can just call for a disposal team and let them take it away to the Surface, and he knows it's not exactly a great life down there in the junkyard, but at least it's a life, and Skunk can't just take that away from them, can he? He can't really hate robots that much, can he?

No one could ever really hate robots that much, could they?

But Astro can't say no, and he can't stop himself.

The whole world is suddenly tinted blue, and the glowing words flash in front of his eyes—[[ACTIVATE ARM CANNONS]]—and his fingers are pulling back into his palms and his palms are pulling back into his arms and his arms are pulling back into two gleaming white cannons, and he can't stop it and he's trying so hard to stop it, to push them back inside him or rip them out but he can't he can't he can't and the robots are staring at him with wide, terrified eyes, and they're screaming and they're shouting and they're saying please no please no please don't kill me and they're yanking and tearing at their own chains in panic, in desperation, and they're trying so hard to get away and he's trying so hard to stop himself and they're begging him to please no please no please no please don't kill me but he can't he can't he can't.

He can't say no, and he can't stop himself.

The cannons fire.

And the first two robots in the lineup explode in a hundred thousand million pieces, too small to ever be repaired again.

The bright yellow glow of life hasn't even left their eyes before he takes aim again and blows up the next two in a blast that shakes the whole room, and now the rest of them are frantic, howling and sobbing and pleading, and he wants to say he's sorry and he wants to say he'd stop it if he could, but he can't he can't he can't

"Oh, come on, you can do better than that!" Skunk hollers from where he stands, so safe inside his little glass booth, and he's laughing as he watches a room full of robots die. "Be a little more creative! Show them what you can really do! Give them all you've got!"

No. Astro's insides go cold as ice just to think about it, because he knows what he can do—he knows the kind of destruction he's capable of, he knows the kind of pain he can inflict, he knows the kind of horror he can rain down, but he's never hurt anyone when he didn't have to, he's never gotten in a fight with anyone he knows he can talk down, he has never let his power get the better of him, he has never let his power control him, he has never let his power corrupt him, but—

—but he can't stop himself.

And suddenly, he's leaping on the next robot in line, and he's—he's just ripping into her with everything he's got, his cannons and his guns and his lasers, and he's punching her with his bare fists and kicking her with his heavy, clunky boots until she's so mutilated that she doesn't even look like anything except a heap of scrap metal, and she's screaming and screaming and screaming and she's still alive and he doesn't know how, he doesn't know how she's still functioning when she's so damaged, and he can't take it anymore.

He kills her with another blast from his cannons.

He tells himself it was the kindest thing he could have possibly done for her.

And then—and then he does it again and he does it again and he does it again and he does it again and he does it again, like a dancer dealing out death with every step, his own body so completely out of his control and so terrifyingly new and unfamiliar, like a foreign country with no language he can speak, and he's ripping and tearing and slicing and stabbing and shooting and wrenching and twisting and breaking until there are no more robots left.

They are all dead at his feet, their mangled and maimed metallic bodies lying lifeless on the floor in front of him with the chains still bolted securely around their ankles.

They never had a chance.

He's got coolant that's not his own dripping down his chin and running in between his fingers. He's got oil that's not his own splashed all over his cheeks.

Oh, god.

He killed them.

Oh, god, he killed them all, and he—he tore their limbs off, and he blasted their eyes out of their sockets, he ripped their bolts and screws out of their joints, lasered their skulls open and smashed their brains to powder with his fists, ripped out the neurons and receptors and synapses, crushed their fingers to dust under his heel, and he killed them, he murdered them, he slaughtered them all with his own hands, and he didn't even let them die painlessly.

He tortured them to death.

And he didn't stop himself.

Astro's unsteady legs finally give out on him, and he hits the floor with a heavy thud that sounds a million miles away. Everything is a million miles away from him—or maybe he's a million miles away from everything, floating underwater where no one can find him, alone at the bottom of the deep, dark ocean.

Oh, god, he killed all those robots.

And he didn't stop himself.

It's like he's back in the arena all over again, with Hamegg's vicious smile always above him as he circled and circled and circled in his flying saucer, and the crowd hollering all around him, stamping their feet and screaming his name, cheering him on while his ears throbbed with all the noise and his stomach churned with the ice-cold guilt and burning-hot shame, and he could see his own hands shaking and he knew they were his but he didn't recognize them, he didn't recognize himself because he had killed all of those robots.

But this is even worse, because these robots didn't fight back—they didn't even try, and maybe they couldn't, maybe they didn't know how, maybe they didn't have any combat systems like he does, or maybe that was Skunk, too, maybe he ordered them not to fight, maybe he told them to stand still, so then they had to stand still while he killed them.

No, this—this isn't anything like the Games.

This wasn't self-defense.

This was slaughter.

A big, broad, black-gloved hand claps down on his shoulder from a million miles away, and a low voice in his ear tells him to get up, so he does, and he doesn't really even stop to think about it. He just blindly follows the black-gloved hand and the low voice back into the elevator, where the black-gloved hand reaches out and presses a button to take them down to the fourth level instead, and the floor drops away with a sudden, sickening lurch.

But it's a million miles away from him. Everything is a million miles away from him. Or maybe he's a million miles away from everything.

He can see a small and scared and bone-white face—streaked with sticky damp tears and stained with glistening black oil and smeared with acid-green coolant—reflected in the cold clear glass, but he doesn't know the boy staring back at him.

It feels like the ride in the elevator lasts forever. It feels like it's barely a second. It feels like it's been a hundred years. It feels like he blinks and it's over, and the lift is sliding open with a soft ding, and a long hall is stretching out before him. The black-gloved hands grab his shoulder and steer him straight into the dark, deeper and deeper until he's in front of a door, and then he's going through the door, and then he's inside the room.

The room has a man in it—a big balding man with a thick red mustache and brawny burly arms crossed over his stocky, barrel chest (—Frasier—the low voice calls him Frasier—) who hollers at him to get down on your knees and lean over the table and hold still.

So he does.

And he doesn't really think about it.

The table stands in the center of the room, and it feels like the walk over to it lasts forever, and it feels like it's barely a second and it feels like it's been a hundred years and it feels like he blinks and it's over and he's there, in front of the smooth flat metal, and then his knees are pressed up against the cold, hard floor, and his arms are pressed up against the cold, hard table, and the KURI is buzzing and droning around his neck and he's still got coolant and oil running off his face like a rushing river and pouring down his cheeks like tears from all the robots he killed.

He killed all those robots.

They couldn't even run away from him.

Frasier pulls out a thin, gleaming silver rod, and presses the glistening tip to the back of his bare shoulder—the sudden jolt of cold on his warm skin should be a sharp piercing shock, but it's a million miles away from him, or maybe he's a million miles away from it—and stares down the length of the metal with one blue eye squinted shut, like he's a hunter, and this is a gun.

Maybe this man is going to kill him.

And maybe that will be a good thing.

Maybe it would be better for everyone if he died right here. Maybe it would be better for everyone if he died before he could hurt anybody else.

A bright golden glint flashes suddenly in the corner of his eye—and something huge and hard and heavy pounds into the other end of the rod with all the force of a sledgehammer.

All at once, the world explodes in a burning-hot, bright-red haze of pain on pain on pain, all his sensors screaming at the sudden, extreme stimulus, and his electronic brain buzzing with the frantic, white-hot signals of hurt hurt hurt—it rips him out of his head and it rips him out of his body and it wraps itself around and around his mind like a heavy quilt, like a creeping snake, around and around and around while bright, colorful stars burst up behind his eyes like fireworks in the night sky (—too loud and almost painfully vivid, the noise and the color and the light tearing his mouth open and crawling down inside him until he gags and retches and chokes on it, until his throat explodes in a mess of sparkling rockets—) until he'd swear on his life that his shoulder has just blown up or blown apart, that the rounded steel joint is broken or fractured or smashed to pieces under his artificial skin, until his whole body is singing like a choir with the pain.

Frasier strikes the rod again.

The agony pulls him under, pulls him down like a heavy tide, rolling through him again and again like ocean waves, crashing over him and crashing into him, and then Frasier pounds down again, and he can hear a voice that he thinks might just be his own, thin and cracking and crying out, and he's still got coolant and oil all over his face from the robots he tortured and maimed and slaughtered, and in the back of his brain he knows this is not even a tenth of what he did to them, and he knows he deserves this, he knows he deserves worse than this, he deserves exactly what he did to the other robots, everything, all of it, measured out ounce for ounce for ounce, and maybe if Frasier just hurts him bad enough, he can make up for it, compensate for it, atone for it, maybe if he just gets punished for what he's done—

The metal rod lifts up off his skin, and a massive hammer drops to the ground beside him with a dull thud, its big brass head all littered with tiny nicks and notches and grooves.

That's what just hit him. That's what Frasier just pounded into his shoulder.

It wasn't enough.

It wasn't bad enough.

Nothing will ever be bad enough to make up for what he did. Nothing will ever hurt him as bad as he hurt all of those poor robots—and he wants to ask Frasier to hit him again, to strike him over and over until he's dead, until he's all in pieces like the robots he left back there (—oh, god, he just left them there, and he didn't even try to help them, he didn't even try to save them, and why didn't he try to save them? did he want them all to die? did he want to kill them? did he like it? what's wrong with him? why didn't he help them? why didn't he save them? that's what he's supposed to do, isn't it? he's supposed to save people and robots and everyone he can. why didn't he save them?—) until he's no better off than they are, until he is nothing but the pain he's dealt out to them.

But his own voice is a million miles away from him. Or maybe he is a million miles away from it.

The rod comes down again to smack him on the face, and Frasier's deep bark rumbles low in his ear, like far-off thunder. "Stay here. And stop that goddamn whining. Jesus."

The order is a million miles away from him, or maybe he's a million miles away from it, but distance doesn't seem to matter too much—he still can't say no, he still can't stop himself, and he clenches his teeth together to cut off the soft gasps and groans still spilling from his mouth like water, and he stays right where he is, bent over the table with his knees on the floor and his open empty palms so sharply, starkly pale against the black metal beneath him.

"—we'll need a disposal team out here first thing in the morning—"

He killed ten robots.

"—try and get Roy if you can—"

He tortured ten robots to death.

"—ten robots, yes, that's right—"

And he didn't stop himself.

He didn't even know their names.

And then he just—he just left them up there to die in that room and he didn't help them and he didn't save them and he just left them there and he just let them die and he's still got their coolant and oil on his face, and his throat pulls tight and he wants to cry but he's a million miles away, too far past the point of tears to believe they'll really come.

And they wouldn't wash away what he's done, anyway.

Nothing can ever wash away what he's done.

At the other end of the room, two pairs of heavy, thumping feet step outside, and the door slides shut with a droning whine, but he's a million miles away, bent over the table with his knees on the floor and his shoulder pulsing faintly with pain, already fading now that the blows have stopped—and he's taken enough hits to know when he needs to worry and when he doesn't, so he knows he doesn't need to worry about this one. But he drags his head up off the table and cranes his neck and twists his arm around to inspect it anyway, and it's—

It's a mark barely bigger than a coin, stamped deep in his skin, its edges all smoothed out to make a perfect circle around the—

—around the striped, triangular head of a skunk.

Skunk Kusai, and a skunk's head engraved on the back of his shoulder, etched into his flesh, cut and carved into him, literally hammered into him, obvious as a neon sign flashing in the night.

They branded him.

Like people used to brand animals—like he's an animal, like he's a thing, like he's a—

—like he's a slave.


APRIL 6 2044

4:21 PM

The day isn't even halfway over, and Hamegg already wants to collapse in the closest chair and sleep for about twelve hours straight, but at least he can finally say that he's officially over the hump—he pulled out all the torn-up wires and got the kid hooked up with some brand-new cables on day one (—the pricy ones, yeah, but he's not too worried about all that right now, seeing as he'll be rolling in the dough when this is all said and done, and anyway, could he even call himself a mechanic if he didn't give it his absolute all on a robot like this? Everything else aside, Astro really is a sheer marvel of machinery, plain and simple, and it'd be a flat-out travesty to let all that power and potential go to waste—) and he used the second day to close up all the thousand cuts in the artificial skin, maneuver the dislocated shoulder back in its socket, refill the coolant, and knock out the valve in the knee and the clamp in the elbow.

The repairs on the optics and the audio ate up an entire day.

It's a damn good thing he told Skunk this job would take him a week or two.

Now he's got to take care of all those missed updates, but if he's going to do that then he's going to need to power Astro back on—and if he goes ahead and gets the kid set up with some oil while he does it, he can just pull two bolts with one yank—so he hauls in a deep, slow breath to steel himself, and pries open the hatch in Astro's chest to stuff the glowing blue sphere right back where he got it from.

The thing spins around and around in the cold metal cavity for a full ten minutes, which is just about forever for a real high-tech robot like this, but Hamegg flips open his OCR, sets it up on the edge of the table, and gets out one of the small, ten-ounce cans of slick black oil while he waits—sure enough, as he heads back over, the kid's system finally comes back online, and he gives a long slow blink of his too-big too-human eyes, and an even longer and slower turn of his dark, spiky head to stare around the room. Little flecks of hardened mud chip off his body or tumble out of his hair to float down to the floor.

Hamegg gives him a (very generous) minute to wake up all the way before he drops a quick, light tap on the bare, dirty shoulder—and the second his hand hits the too-human skin, Astro flinches back like a scared deer, tensing up like a spring and tossing a wild, startled kind of half-glance all around the workshop, like he's not totally sure where he's supposed to look.

But he doesn't throw a blind punch or jump up off the table and bolt for the door to make some kind of desperate, last-ditch break for it, so this is already off to a much better start than Hamegg had any real right to expect.

And then the kid's unfocused brown eyes finally lock on Hamegg, and he freezes—like a dog that knows it's about to get beaten, like he'll be dead if he looks away for even a second, like Hamegg is a shark in the water, and he's bleeding out in the open ocean all alone.

It's probably been a good long while since the kid has met a human that hasn't tried to hurt him, and maybe even longer than that since he's met a human that's trying to help him, and Hamegg doesn't exactly have the best track record with robots as it is—no way Astro doesn't remember that. It's been almost a full year now since the kid crashed on his doorstep, upended his whole life in a matter of mere days, and never even slowed down to say sorry on his way back out the door, but that big fiasco in the arena is probably still as fresh in his mind as it is in Hamegg's.

Bad blood never washes out.

But Hamegg just latches onto the kid's skinny arm, right above his sharp and pointy little elbow, and hauls him upright on the table to shove the metal can into his small, shaking hands. "All right, come on, get up. That's more than enough of that."

Astro lets Hamegg lift him up, limp and slack as a little girl's doll in his grip, but he doesn't even glance at the cup in his lap—of course he doesn't, because why would he ever do anything to make Hamegg's life even slightly easier?—because he won't take his eyes off Hamegg.

Of course he doesn't.

Why would he ever do anything to make Hamegg's life even slightly easier?

But Hamegg lets it slide for right now—he's been powered off for a long while and he's seriously behind on his updates, so it's possible he's just not all there right now—and jams the flat end of the sync cord into his OCR before he holds the other end up, tapping the thin metallic tip with one finger. "Here. Plug this into your port for me."

But Astro completely ignores the command—which shouldn't even be possible, because Hamegg saw his CET file with his own eyes, saw the line where it said LOR installed and activated, so there is literally no reason why the kid could just shake off an order like that—and goes right on staring at Hamegg, his fingers going tighter and tighter around the oil until his knuckles are whiter than bone. But that really shouldn't be possible with the laws of robotics in his system—like it or not, he's just another run-of-the-mill robot now, with all the free will to match, which means he has to do whatever the nearest human tells him to, and he doesn't have a choice and he doesn't get to say no, so he can't just receive a direct decree and not go through with it, can he? Not unless the command comes from someone who hasn't been keyed into the control center, who hasn't got the kind of clearance to toss out orders, but that would mean that Kusai never keyed him in, and oh, shit, Kusai never keyed him in.

And that means the kid doesn't have to listen to a damn thing he says.

Ohhhhh-kay.

So, this is—this is going to be harder than he thought.

"Come on, kiddo, work with me here," he waves the cord under Astro's nose. "Put this in your port, or I will." It'd be easy enough to just do it for himself, and he's already had to do it once anyway, to get the full-system scan, and he knows exactly where it is—in his chest, hidden under the hatch, situated about two inches to the left of the spinning blue sphere that powers him—but now that the kid's conscious, he'd probably like the dignity of doing it for himself, and Hamegg won't deny him that.

But Astro's mouth presses into a thin white line, and he takes one hand off the can in his lap to shove the cable away—but his lips finally fall open, and his voice spills out, hoarse and cracked and raw. "I can't."

Jesus, the kid sounds awful—like he's just swallowed a whole bunch of broken glass, or like somebody got their hands around his throat and choked him within an inch of his life. Or like he's been screaming his heart out for hours and hours.

Hamegg doesn't let himself think too long about that last one.

"Well, what do you know? So the kid can talk." He arches his brows and flips Astro a small, wry smile. "What's the matter? Too special to plug yourself in?"

Astro's face finally settles into a glare, but he can't carry it off even a little—it looks all wrong with his big innocent eyes and tiny button nose—and his mouth goes even thinner and whiter. He finally breaks that unflinching—and frankly, kind of creepy—eye contact to turn his head sharply away from Hamegg, his whole body suddenly rigid, taut like stretched string, and angled pointedly to one side. "I'm not permitted to access it."

Oh.

Oh, shit.

The sarcastic smile slides off Hamegg's face like water.

He can count on one hand the number of robots he's met from the rings who aren't allowed to mess with their own power source, and it's never an order that Skunk adds lightly—he only ever keys in that kind of command for the machines that try to shut themselves down. For the ones that try to deactivate themselves.

The laws of robotics won't actually let them go through with it—rule number three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law—but some machines here and there do find loopholes every now and again, and besides, it's the rebellion implicit in the attempt that gets under Kusai's skin. The guy never lets any kind of defiance go unpunished.

Hamegg only knew Astro for a week or two before he flew back up to Metro City and began his new, glittering life as the famous superhero, and maybe that's not long enough for him to make any kind of judgment call, but he just really does not seem like the type to throw in the towel when things get tough—which means, whatever the hell made him think that a permanent shutdown would be better than a life in the rings, it had to be pretty bad.

But it's—it's fine.

If Astro can't cope with the kind of crap that happens to the robots in the rings, that's his problem.

Hamegg isn't being paid anywhere near enough to give a damn—and he is not being paid anywhere near enough to coddle some stupid kid—so he shakes his head and he shakes it off and he goes back to work and he reminds himself that this is the thing he's being paid to do.

He flips the hatch open with a flick of a finger—and the second the sphere is exposed, Astro tenses up tighter than a coiled spring, his back so stiff and straight it's like he's got a steel rod for a spine, and his breath hitches in his throat, so loud Hamegg can't not hear it, but he just keeps his head down and plugs the other end of the cord in the sync port.

Astro doesn't loosen up even when he backs off again.

And he never takes his eyes off Hamegg.

Not even for a second.

It's only a minute or so before the two machines finally link up, and long glowing strings of burning red and neon green numbers fill the screen, and Hamegg can't hold back a low whistle—yeah, sure, he knew it would be bad, but he didn't think it would be this bad. It gives him a headache just to look at it for too long, and he rubs a hand lightly down his throbbing temple—he wants to ask the kid what the hell happened and he wants to ask why the hell did Kusai let you get this bad and he wants to ask what the hell was that moron thinking but Astro's still got that eerie stare going on, his face perfectly blank and coldly neutral, and Hamegg can tell he's not going to get another word out of him right now.

So he just huffs out a heavy sigh and slumps down lower and lower in his swivel chair, tapping his fingers on the splintered edge of the worktable as he waits for the rest of the data to load up—Astro doesn't say anything, but he swings his legs about half an inch to the right, deliberately away from Hamegg's hand.

Everything goes quiet for a minute or two, completely silent except for the soft clicks and clacks of the keys as he types up a number here or punches in a figure there—all the lines on lines on lines of code spin and blur in front of his dry, tired eyes, and he scrubs at his temple again, already tight and hot with the promise of a bad headache in an hour or two—until the kid's raw, rasping voice suddenly rings out again, almost unnaturally loud in the thick hush of the workshop.

"I'm not doing it again."

And it's just so random and unexpected and totally out of the blue that Hamegg actually looks away from his screen to throw the kid a quick, baffled glance, his brows lifting higher and higher on his forehead. "Come again?"

"I'm not—I'm not—" Astro hauls in a deep breath and sits up straighter, his hands clenching up in tight fists. "I'm not doing it again. I'm not going back in the arena." He swallows so loud it echoes around and around the silent room. "I'm not."

Oh, of freakin' course.

And the thing is that Hamegg almost wants to go with it, to say I bought you off Kusai so you're mine now, and you'll do whatever the hell I tell you to and you're headed straight back to the ring when you're all patched up and you'd better make your peace with it because you'll be there for the rest of your life, but that would just be counterproductive—and also, kind of mean.

Astro might be a major pain in the neck more often than not, and he could definitely stand to be knocked down a peg or ten, but Skunk has obviously put him through hell and back these past five months, and Hamegg doesn't see the point in adding more to the pile.

"Yeah, well, you can simmer down about that," he says instead, dull and flat. "The Games are dead now—thanks to you."

"Thanks to me?" Astro sputters. "What did I do?"

And he's got the nerve to act all surprised about it, too—like he really thinks it wasn't all his fault, like he really thinks he's not the reason Hamegg is still stuck down here in the scrap heap, left behind like an old and unwanted and outdated machine, dumped down in the junkyard the second he wasn't shiny and pretty and new anymore, like he really thinks he didn't ruin Hamegg's whole life in less than twenty-four hours before he blasted off back to Metro City to be universally adored by everyone who's ever laid eyes on him.

"You're kidding, right?" A low, bitter laugh rips itself out of Hamegg's throat and hangs in the air, loud and ugly. "You seriously think anyone wanted to sponsor another match after that whole peaceful protest stunt you pulled with ZOG? No freakin' way, kid. No one would touch the Games with a twenty-foot pole after that."

Astro snorts, his dark brows crashing together in a deep scowl, and sinks back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. "Then I guess you should have thought about that before you put me in the arena."

Hamegg isn't really in the habit of saying fuck you to little kids who barely come up to his elbow, but he thinks he could make an exception just this once. "You know, you might want to think about maybe not pissing off the guy who's patching you up. I'm playing nice right now, but believe me—I could change that in a real big hurry."

Astro glowers back at him for a long second, jaw clenched and eyes flashing, but he finally looks away with his hands still balled up in fists and his mouth pressing down in that thin, white line again.

Score one for Hamegg.

Maybe now the situation's finally sinking in for the stuck-up little brat—maybe he's finally realizing that the rest of the week will go a hell of a lot easier for him if he just stays on Hamegg's good side and doesn't stir up too much crap, and maybe now he won't move or talk or do a damn thing except what he's told to do, like a normal robot, and maybe Hamegg will actually make it through the day without a full-blown migraine pounding away in his skull, and he can just—

"It wasn't a stunt."

"What?" Hamegg goes still, his hand half an inch from the OCR's smooth touchpad, and he doesn't look at Astro, but he cocks his head to the side to listen better on sheer, blind reflex. "What are you yakking on about?"

And now Astro won't look at him—he keeps his head turned away and his arms folded firmly, his lips still thin and white. "What happened in the Games. What ZOG and I did. It wasn't a stunt—or a protest, or anything like that." He digs his heel into the side of the table until thin chips of cheap wood peel off and flutter down to the dirty floor. "We weren't trying to prove a point. We just didn't want to fight anymore."

Hamegg isn't totally sure what he expected to come out of Astro's mouth, but he can definitely say that was somewhere near the bottom of the list, and is that seriously what the kid has decided to focus on here? Really? I didn't mean to ruin your entire life! I was just being my genuine authentic pacifist do-gooder self!

Christ, give him a break.

"Just drink your oil, kid."

Astro drops a quick, startled glance down at the can clutched in his hands, completely untouched and still brimming, like he didn't even know it was there—and he raises it up like he's going to drink it, but instead he just cups one hand under the spout and pours a few glistening dark drops out into his open palm. And then he just stares down at the gleaming black beads for a second before he nods, one firm jerk of the chin, and looks back up at Hamegg.

"How much?"

Did he just—did he just check to make sure it was really oil? For Christ's sake, what the hell else would he give a robot to drink? What else would anyone ever give a robot to drink? It's not like they can gulp down a glass of water! And how much, he asks—like it's not a freakin' ten-ounce can! "All of it."

"All of it?" Astro echoes, like he's got to make sure. "For me?"

And it—it sounds kind of like he's trying his hardest not to get too hopeful about it. Like he thinks it's way too good to be true. Like he thinks it's some kind of joke. Like he thinks Hamegg is about to reach out and snatch it away and laugh in his face and say just kidding any second now.

That scan said he just had a refill, and Hamegg thought it was weird that he'd already run out again in less than two weeks, but now he has to wonder—how much did Skunk actually give him? If he's getting so excited over a measly ten ounces, how much does Skunk usually count as a refill? When was the last time this kid actually had as much oil as he needed?

And the way he tipped it out into his hand to see it for himself, like maybe it might be something else, like maybe it was something else once, like maybe it was something bad once…

"Yeah," Hamegg says, finally, but it comes out low and hoarse and rough, so he has to clear his throat and say it again. "Yeah, kid, it's—it's all for you. And there's more if you need it."

"Oh," Astro says, soft and breathless, like anything more than this one single can is the kind of luxury that only exists in his wildest dreams, and he finally lifts the oil to his lips to take a tiny, tentative sip—he holds it in his mouth for a long second before he goes in for another swallow, slightly bigger than the first, but steady and even and measured.

Hamegg glances over at the OCR screen again—where a bright blue pop-up window assures him that it's updating synced system and asks him please don't turn off your computer, but the bar at the bottom idles at seven percent—and he tries not to think about the look on the kid's face when he said the oil was all for him, and he tries not to think about the millions on millions on millions of tiny cuts he closed up all over the battered little body. He tries not to think about the shredded synthetic lips, chewed to pieces in a haze of pain. He tries not to think about the blown valve in the kid's knee and the busted clamp in his elbow. He tries not to think about the dislocated shoulder. He tries not to think about all the wires he had to pull out. He tries not to think about the way the kid walked straight into the worktable because he couldn't even see. He tries not to think about the way the kid said thank you for calling him by his name.

He tries not to think about the way Astro will look two weeks from now, when he's back with Skunk, and he tries not to wonder if he'll have more rips and tears where his cables are coming out. He tries not to wonder if he'll have more blown valves or busted clamps. He tries not to wonder if he'll bite his lips to bits again. He tries not to wonder where Skunk will take him to get patched up next time.

He tries not to wonder if Skunk will stand back and let the kid get this bad again.

He already knows the answer to that one.

But it's—it's not his problem.

Whatever else happens to the kid from here on out is not his problem—so long as he gets Astro back to Skunk in one piece, and better shape than he was before he got here, his job is done, and everything else is completely out of his hands. Skunk will get his robot back, and Hamegg will get his money, and he can finally start over, somewhere far away from here, and he can finally build a better life for himself and everything will finally be okay—a nice big win-win-win situation for everyone.

And Astro will be fine—sure, the whole situation seriously sucks for him, and Hamegg's got no doubt that he's only headed for more pain down the road, but he's just a robot, so what does it matter if he gets roughed up here and there? This is what he's meant to do—serve the humans in whatever way his master tells him to, and he'd better get used to it and he'd better learn to cope with it, and he'd better not whine or cry or snivel about it, because he's just a robot and this is what robots do.

For Christ's sake, it doesn't matter what the hell anyone does to Astro—Skunk could do this all over again, and it wouldn't matter and it wouldn't mean anything and it wouldn't count, because the kid doesn't even have real feelings.

Does he?

No, that's—that's crazy.

That's just flat-out crazy. That's ten thousand different kinds of completely and totally impossible.

Sure, it's an easy mistake to make for the common layman, particularly the overemotional, bleeding-heart types, and especially when the robot is one of the hyper-realistic humanoid models like Astro, but when it comes down to it, all the mindless machines on the market these days run on a simple pattern recognition process—prior experience tells them how to react to various situations and stimuli, tells them what to do and what to say and what to think, and shapes a solid identity for them out of the scattered pieces of their past.

Of course, without that prior experience, the robot is forced to fall back on their preprogrammed responses—and it always shows.

But it didn't show with Astro.

According to his CET file, he was only two days old when he ended up on Hamegg's doorstep, way too young to have any kind of prior experience with anything—but the problem is that he didn't act like it, that he didn't have any preprogrammed responses or pattern recognition to rely on when he fell down here because he had never left Metro City before, and he'd certainly never been on the Surface before (Hamegg could tell that with just one look at him) but he never missed a beat, never lagged too long, never had to slow down and shuffle through all the potential reactions and replies built into him.

And he hit it off with all the other kids here in the blink of an eye.

And that couldn't be pattern recognition.

Because he'd never been here before.

And that couldn't be a preprogrammed response, because Tenma built this kid from the ground up, and he's never been down here before, either—and anyway, Hamegg is pretty sure the guy still thinks that people who live on the Surface are basically no better than wild animals, running around on all fours in fur pelts and scrounging for scraps and sleeping in caves, feral and illiterate.

So if Astro did have any kind of preprogrammed response to the Surface, it would have been a negative one.

Except that it wasn't.

The kid actually seemed to like it here—staring around in wide-eyed wonder the second he stepped inside Hamegg's tiny, rundown workshop, and he'd warmed right up to Hamegg himself in about thirty seconds flat (so fast that if he'd been a real human kid, Hamegg would have pulled him aside and given him a good long talk on stranger danger)—and there is no freakin' way that old Bill would ever have put that kind of attitude in his picture-perfect robot son.

There is no way Tenma would have ever written it in his boy's code to like Hamegg.

And it—it couldn't be pattern recognition or preprogrammed response to save Hamegg's life.

That was pretty much the exact opposite of pattern recognition—if Astro had relied purely on prior experience to tell him what to do like a normal robot, he would have stepped back and let ZOG handle the whole thing, he would have stayed exactly where he was, still flat on the ground from where Hamegg had shocked the ever-loving shit out of him, because prior experience would have told him don't save the human who hurt you or he'll hurt you again and ZOG would have squashed Hamegg like a bug under his colossal foot, and Hamegg wouldn't even be here to think about it right now.

But he is here to think about it.

Because Astro saved him.

And it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't add up.

No matter how Hamegg writes out the equation—no matter how he counts the numbers—it just doesn't add up.

He flicks a cautious glance over at the kid, still drinking his oil with his back pressed to the hard wooden wall behind the table, his spiky head tilted up to stare at the ceiling and his little legs still swinging lightly back and forth in midair.

And it—it doesn't really matter, and he doesn't really need to know, and he doesn't even know why he cares so much, because whatever the hell it turns out to be—a glitch in the system or a fault in the code or a flaw in the logic—it doesn't matter, because it's just a thing that happened, and it's over now, all in the past, water under the bridge, bygones and bygones, so why does Hamegg even care?

But it's been almost a full year, and he still can't get the question out of his head. He still doesn't have an answer that makes sense.

And if he doesn't ask now, he never will.

"Okay," he says, slow and quiet, so he can take it back if he wants to, so he can grab it out of the air and stuff it in his mouth and swallow it down if he loses his nerve, "okay, let's—let's say that crap you pulled with ZOG really wasn't a stunt. What do you call the rest of it, then?" He hauls in a deep breath and spins his chair around to face Astro full-on. "The part where you wouldn't let ZOG finish me off?" he swallows too hard. "Why did you do that?"

Astro frowns, the sudden wrinkle in his brow cutting a deep crease down his forehead, before he finally says—in that sort of politely puzzled way he always does when he thinks it's a dumb question but he's too nice to say so— "Do I need a reason to care about people?"

It's so completely out of left field, literally the last thing he thought he'd hear, and he freezes, eyes fixed on the kid's face as he waits for that guileless, earnest façade to break, but the seconds drag on and on and on, and it never does.

And Hamegg has no idea what to do with that.

"I—I'd just sicced every 'bot I had on you." Christ knows he'd be ticked off as all hell if it had been him that got shocked into oblivion, tossed into a literal gladiator arena, and told to fight his own way out, sucks to be you and good luck. "And I was—I was zapping you half to death, and you were just—you were just—" he rakes a hand roughly through his hair until he's sure the dark, greasy strands are sticking straight up all over his head, but he really couldn't care less right now. "You could have just let him do it—you know you could have just let him do it, and you had a whole arena full of people who would have sworn to it that you didn't do anything wrong, so why didn't you?"

Astro stares at him for a long and silent minute before he finally opens his mouth, and his voice comes out, soft and steady and serious in a way Hamegg has never heard from him before. "If I let something bad happen when I've got the power to prevent it, then I did do something wrong. No matter what everyone else says."

And he's so freakin' sincere about it, all big innocent eyes and tiny solemn face, and Hamegg wants to tell him he's crazy, tell him he's going to get himself killed sooner or later with that kind of attitude, tell him it's a damn good thing he lives in Metro City because he wouldn't last a week down here where it's every man for himself and you've got to be selfish as all hell if you want to survive, but it looks so much like maybe the kid really means what he's saying here—which doesn't make any sense.

It wasn't pattern recognition when Astro saved him, and it wasn't a preprogrammed response, so what was it?

He's finally got his answer, and it's only left him with more questions than before.

Hamegg forces himself to focus on the glowing screen again, but the bar has only jumped up to twelve percent since he looked at it last, and he's got nothing to really do right now, so he lets his eyes slide over to Astro again—he's still clutching that can of oil like it's a lifeline, but it makes a hollow metallic sound now when his fingers press into the side. Empty, or close to it, at least—he'll need a fresh one soon.

Hamegg pushes his chair back from the table—with a sharp, whining screech of the ugly brass wheels on the peeling tile floor—to just go ahead and grab a new can from the stack in the corner. It's not like he's running low—he's practically got the stuff coming out his ears, all part and parcel of being a mechanic, and with the way Skunk's been scrimping the kid, the little guy should really drink his fill while he can.

But when Hamegg tries to hand it to him, Astro just blinks blankly down at it like he doesn't know what to do next.

"Come on, kid, you need all you can get," Hamegg tells him. "Seriously, you're in pretty bad shape. If you think you can stomach it right now, then you should drink it."

Astro flicks a glance up at him, almost hesitant, before he finally reaches out and takes the can, popping the spout up. He doesn't check it this time before he takes a sip. "Thanks."

Hamegg should probably remind him that he's getting paid to do this—that he wouldn't be doing this at all without the promise of the payout to come, that if it was up to him he'd just leave the kid to rust in the scrap heap and be done with it, that he's so much more trouble than any robot is worth and he doesn't know why Skunk went to so much hassle all for him—but the silence drags on and on and on, and he realizes he can't do it.

Instead, he just shrugs it off and sits back down with a quiet creak of the cushioned seat. "Sure. No problem."