CONTENT WARNING: This chapter deals with non-graphic but on-screen, repeated sexual assault of an underage child. The assaults begin with the line "But sooner or later, the waiting ends" and ends with the line "And he doesn't know when the last man finally leaves..." though Astro continues to think vaguely about the assaults for several moments afterward. Don't read the passages in between if you believe you could be triggered.


APRIL 7 2044

5:51 PM

Okay, look, it's a bad idea to power Astro back on—and Hamegg knows it's a bad idea to power Astro back on, he knows it before he ever does it, because he's just here to do the repairs, run the updates, pick up his paycheck when the job is done, and nothing else, just shut the robot down and leave him like that until he's back in Kusai's hands, back where he belongs (or, at least, where he belongs so long as no one looks too closely at that CET file—collected* from Metro City, and everyone knows what that little asterisk means—stolen, smuggled, illegally obtained—) but he also knows he can tack on an extra two hundred to the final price if he goes ahead and cleans the kid up a little while he's still in the shop.

Of course, it's not like a shower is the be-all and end-all, the only even vaguely viable solution to what's actually a pretty simple problem in the long run—he could always just wipe the kid down with a wet cloth and a bucket of soapy water, and then he wouldn't need to power him back on at all, no big deal and case closed, but Astro is in pretty desperate need of a good deep clean if he's being honest here, and whatever way he tries to slice it, a wet cloth and a bucket of soapy water just isn't going to do the trick.

And he could just drag Astro out to the backyard and spray him down with a harsh blast of ice-cold, mud-brown water straight from the hose, but that would really just be all kinds of counterproductive—whatever the hell comes out of that pipe, it's nowhere near clean, and he can't even confidently call it water, either—and, again, unnecessarily mean.

Which is—objectively a pretty stupid thing to think about, a stupid thing to get so hung up on, and why does he even care so much about being fair to the show-off smart-mouth who ruined his whole life in less than ten minutes? Last he checked, Astro definitely didn't stress too much about being fair to him, so it'd just be an eye for an eye, tit for tat, what goes around comes around, and all of that, except—

Except.

Except he doesn't actually want to do anything like that—he doesn't want to go around like this all week, constantly on the lookout for little pints of petty and pointless revenge he can exact from Astro, he doesn't want to make Astro pay for what happened back there in the ring, he doesn't want an eye for an eye or tit for tat or what goes around comes around, and he's—

—he's not really all that angry about the Games anymore.

Look, Hamegg doesn't know what made the kid swoop in and stop ZOG and save him, so all of a sudden and out of the blue that he didn't even believe it for about sixty seconds straight, but he knows it wasn't preprogrammed response, and he knows it wasn't pattern recognition (and he knows because he could see it in Astro's eyes—that bright spark of real life, of real independent thought and decision and action, a kind of consciousness and cognizance different from any other robot he's ever seen before—the full awareness of what he was doing, what he was, who he was, and it was so dangerously and so terrifyingly close to actual humanity—) and it wasn't a stunt, we weren't trying to prove a point, we just didn't want to fight anymore, and Hamegg waits for the fury to spark up in his chest like a fire, burning and blazing inside him until it's all ash and dust, but it just—

—it just doesn't come.

Jesus, this is the best opportunity he's ever had in his entire life—the chance to hold Astro's complete helplessness over his head all week, punish him for what he did and finally get some real justice, humiliate him, humble him, cut him down to size, shove him facedown in the dirt and make him realize that's where he belongs, that he's just junk, just a pile of unwanted scrap metal, just a robot who got it in his head that he could be human, that he could be a person—but now that it's finally here, it's a pyrrhic victory, and the bitter taste at the back of his throat isn't anything like triumph.

Hamegg thinks about the millions on millions of little cuts crossing and crisscrossing over the battered body, the thin ribbons of flesh ripped off from Skunk's stinging whip, his lips in shreds where he literally chewed straight through his own skin because he was in so much pain, and Hamegg thinks, maybe, Astro has already had more than enough of that.

And what good would it even do, anyway? It's not like it would really change a damn thing—it wouldn't rewind the whole world back to that day in the arena and stop the disaster with ZOG before it could ever start, and it wouldn't fix the mess he's already in, and it wouldn't get him the Games back, and it wouldn't get him his kids back and it wouldn't get him his life back.

And, more than all of that, it would just be a really lousy thing to do after the kid saved his life.

So Hamegg powers Astro back on.

It still takes a while for his system to kick up, probably from all the recent overuse, but it's still much faster than it was, and it's only a five-second lag before he moves, his tiny hand jerking up off the table to rub at his eyes with his knuckles, like a little kid who just woke up from a long nap.

(It's really freaking annoying how adorable he is.)

Astro takes a long, slow look around the workshop, careful and deliberate like he's trying to burn it all into his brain, before he finally glances up at Hamegg with his brows arched and his spiky head cocked to the side. "Time to go?"

And it's not what he says, but the way he says it—so steady and calm, he could be talking about the weather, so steady and calm that it actually takes a solid ten seconds for Hamegg to work out what he means, and in that stretch of silence, the kid pushes himself up on his palms, stiff and heavy and obviously sore as all hell (but that's no surprise, seeing as he just got about two dozen repairs in less than four days—if he's being honest with himself, Hamegg is pretty impressed he isn't whining about it).

"No, no," Hamegg says firmly, with a hand out to push Astro back down and tell him to stay on the table, for Christ's sake, but he freezes halfway there—the kid seriously freaked out at just a quick touch tap on the shoulder the other day, and he knows he shouldn't care, but it just feels really mean to do that to a little kid who obviously doesn't like it and can't say no—and, at the last second, he drops his arm limply back to his side instead. "Not yet. Not 'til next week, so cool your thrusters, kiddo."

"Oh." Astro blinks up at him, blank and baffled, before he dips his chin down in a quick nod. "Okay. So what's—?" he glances around the workshop again. "What's going on?"

"You're waterproof, right?" All the latest models in Metro City can usually submerge themselves up to twelve hundred feet without so much as a single spark or loose screw, but he is not about to put it past this damn kid to be the sole exception to every last rule in existence. "Getting wet won't screw with your system or anything, will it?"

"No, I—I don't think so," Astro frowns, a slight crease between his brows, as he swings his legs over the edge of the table to let his bright red boots dangle five feet off the floor. "I mean, I can go swimming and stuff, so—I'm pretty sure I'm in the clear."

Just like he figured.

"So you think you're up for a shower, then?"

And just like that—all in a blink, all in a heartbeat—the kid's tiny face slams shut like a door, his big brown eyes going completely and totally blank, all glazed and glassy like his whole system has suddenly shut down on him, his wrinkled brow smoothing out like crumpled paper spread flat and his mouth pressing down in that thin white line, his body so stiff and still he could be a stone statue.

All of a sudden, he's not even breathing.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I can do that."

And it's not what he says, but the way he says it—dull and flat, a perfect mechanical monotone, no emotion or inflection, toneless and impassive, simple and neutral and coldly indifferent, like a bored teacher going over the basics for the billionth time, two times two is four and two times three is six and two times four is eight.

Like a machine.

Like a robot.

Which is—not a thing that Astro ever sounds like, and Hamegg knows that's a crazy thing to say because that's what he is, a machine, a robot, but he never acts like it, he never does the whole glowing blue eyes / flat mechanical voice / what can I do for you, sir or ma'am shtick, he never acts like he's anything but human.

Maybe take a shower has some kind of unspoken connotation attached to it? Maybe that specific order activates a specific sort of software, or maybe it triggers a particular program or protocol that Kusai didn't tell him about (Kusai apparently didn't tell him about a lot of things when he asked him to take on the job) or maybe Astro has finally fallen back on that pattern recognition—maybe this exact command always leads to one exact scenario, and prior experience is telling him how to react, what to do and what to say and what to think—

"Okay, okay, hang on," Hamegg says, soft so he doesn't startle Astro, but he knocks his knuckles lightly on the edge of the table to make sure he gets the kid's attention, "what's going on here? What's wrong? 'Cause if you don't think you can make it through a shower just yet, that's fine, but you've got to be straight with me about it. If you collapse in there—"

"I can take a shower," Astro cuts in, louder now, but still in that godawful voice, so perfectly detached and matter-of-fact—so dead, like he's already long gone, but his mouth hasn't gotten the message, like the moment right before rigor mortis, like the final spasm before the inevitable end—and he's staring at Hamegg's hand on the table like he can't look away. Like the pale white skin against the dark brown wood is the single most fascinating thing he's ever seen in his entire life. "I can take a shower. If that's what you want."

And even with that blank tone and perfect poker face, Hamegg just knows it's not meant to be a statement, and it sure as hell isn't meant to be an offer—it's like a challenge and a test and a plea all rolled up into one, and he doesn't know what the right answer is, but he knows he doesn't have it. "I—I want you to be clean, so—yeah?"

Maybe he should run a second system scan just to be on the safe side? If it was really the command itself that sparked all this, he'd better get a good look at the kid's code, and figure out what the hell is going on here, and if it wasn't the command itself, it could be a glitch, or an error—or maybe one of those thousand updates got corrupted somewhere down the line, and he just didn't notice? Except that he would have noticed, and he knows he would have noticed—Kusai and his band of puffed-up billionaire bastards can think whatever the hell they want about him, and Surface folks in general, but they wouldn't call on him for the big jobs like this if he wasn't really damn good at what he does.

Or it could just be some serious lag—the kid's system has been overloaded and overworked for a good long while now (not a single update since December, for Christ's sake) and he definitely wouldn't be the first robot whose brain and body takes a day or so to catch up with all the repairs.

"Okay," Hamegg huffs out a heavy sigh, "just—just hang on a second. Sit tight. Let's check you over one last time, okay?"

Astro blinks blankly back at him. "I'm fine. I can take a shower."

"Yeah, well," Hamegg pushes off the edge of the table, one hand out to grab his OCR off the workbench. "How about you let the mechanic be the judge of that?"

"I can take a shower," Astro says again, but his voice has got a hard edge to it now—a line of tension, thin as a whipcord, thrumming just under the surface like a rushing river under a sheet of solid sparkling ice. "If you'll just let me, I can take a shower—and then I can service you afterward."

Wait.

What?

"Service me?" Hamegg echoes, and mostly to make sure he's heard right, but the thick hazy veil of empty incredulity finally lifts—the scattered pieces of the jumbled puzzle click together in the quiet of his mind and his chest pulls almost painfully tight, all clenched up like a fist, as a sudden wave of ice-cold comprehension crashes over him.

Of course that's where Astro's mind went.

Of course that's what he thinks.

Because the Hotel always cleans their robots up real nice right before a new client comes in.

And Hamegg knows he should just completely ignore it—he should just tell the kid to shut the hell up and let me scan you, for Christ's sake and pretend he still doesn't know what the problem is, he should just play dumb and pretend he hasn't figured it out, or maybe he should say shut the hell up and get in the shower and let Astro think whatever he wants, let him believe that's a thing that might happen here, let him stew and steep in the fear of it all week long, and that should teach him a lesson or two, right? That should definitely keep him in line until he goes back to Kusai, wouldn't it?

It'd be so easy to say it.

It'd be so easy to holler at him just do what I say, you stupid piece of scrap, and count yourself lucky it's not worse, it'd be so easy to be mean, but it sticks in his throat and it sticks in the back of his mouth and it sticks under his tongue and it sticks on his teeth, and he looks into that tiny little child-face, and he just can't do it.

He just can't let a little kid walk around with that thought in his head all week, scared to death and always on edge, always looking over his shoulder, always holding his breath, just waiting for the second that the hammer drops and Hamegg forces him to

Fuck. No.

Hamegg squeezes his eyes shut and hauls in a deep, slow breath, and okay, he can—he can do this. He can do this. He's got this.

He knows what the problem is now, and that means he can fix it.

"No, kid, I'm not—" he pries his eyes back open, and crouches down so he's not any taller than Astro, so he doesn't loom over him—he knows he probably fits the basic demographic of all the usual clients in the Hotel (white, male, mid-thirties, well-read and well-educated, born and raised in Metro City) but it can't hurt to try and look just a tad less intimidating, right? "I—I'm just—I'm just asking you to take a shower, okay? I don't want you walking around the shop covered in crud all week. That's it."

"He won't care," Astro says, still blank and flat as a wall, staring straight ahead with his eyes duller than a damn corpse. "Just knock a couple grand off the price. He'll know what it's for."

Hamegg freezes, his brain screeching to a halt like broken gears catching on their own teeth as he turns it over and over and over in his mind—almost frenzied, almost frantic, because that can't actually mean what he thinks it means, can it? That can't actually mean what it sounds like, can it?

"What?" he says, again, and too loud—he can hear it in his own ears, see it in the way Astro goes suddenly still, a razor-thin wire of rigidity running through him like an electric current, like a strike of lightning, but he'll know what it's for, and the kid just says that like it's a completely and totally normal thing to say, like it's nothing new and it's nothing special and it's no big deal, like this is just the kind of crap that happens when he goes off to a mechanic, like it's all just par for the freakin' course, and holy shit, is this the kind of crap that happens when he goes off to a mechanic? Is this all just par for the course when he goes off to a mechanic?

Because this shouldn't happen when he goes off to a mechanic! This shouldn't be par for the course when he goes off to a mechanic! But he says he'll know what it's for, and that means it's got to be, and that means that Kusai knows about it—that he's okay with it, that he doesn't stop it, that he just stands aside and stands back and lets it happen, that he never steps in, that he never interferes, that he never gets involved and he never gets in the middle of it, that he just lets it go on and lets it play out and lets it happen and lets them all get away with it, and for what? A freakin' five-thou discount?

Jesus fucking Christ.

Look, Hamegg has never really been all that keen on the concept of the Hotel, and he can cop to that, he can face up to that, he can admit that maybe he's not coming from a completely unbiased point of view here, maybe he's not being totally impartial—he's definitely no bleeding-heart liberal or die-hard reformist radical, but he just doesn't think anyone should be pushed into that kind of thing and he doesn't think anyone should ever have to do that, not even the real basic robots who can't even think for themselves, and he doesn't think the Hotel is a thing that should even exist at all—but the point here is that this is not the Hotel.

And no one has a right to Astro when he's not in the Hotel.

And Astro has a right to be safe with a mechanic.

And he's got a right to know he's safe with a mechanic.

"Okay, listen, kid—Astro," Hamegg amends the slip with a small, firm shake of the head, and maybe it's a stupid thing to think about and maybe it's a stupid thing to get so hung up on, but he'd said thank you, all banged-up and just barely conscious, you called me Astro, no one's done that for a while— "Listen to me, Astro, I'm not—I'm not gonna do that, okay? I'm not gonna do that to you."

"I told you," Astro says, dull and flat, a perfect mechanical monotone, no emotion or inflection, toneless and impassive. "He won't care."

"It's not about him," Hamegg snaps back, and he leans down just a little farther, so he can look Astro in the eyes and make sure he's made his point, so he can make sure he's made himself absolutely clear, but the poor kid just looks so defeated, and that crushing squeeze has apparently made itself a permanent home in Hamegg's chest, and he doesn't even stop to think about it before he just blurts it out, before he just says—

"I'm not going to do that to you. I'm not ever going do that to you. So long as you're under my roof, no one is going to do that to you."

Astro goes completely stock-still, staring up at Hamegg like he's never seen him before—like he's just been struck totally speechless, eyes wide but with a flicker of real life in them again, and the thin white line of his mouth loosens at the edges—and Hamegg can't tell if he's actually gained any ground here, or if Astro is just surprised that he hasn't already been ordered to get off the table and go down on his knees.

Jesus freakin' Christ, he's really had to do that, hasn't he?

Hamegg feels sick just thinking about it, and he can't even wrap his mind around the fact that the kid in front of him has actually lived it, day in and day out for five freaking months, no choice in it, no say in it, no way to stand up for himself and no way to get out and no way to fight back and no way to say no.

For the first time in his life, he wonders what it's like to be a robot—to have such a strict, set-in-stone list of what he can and can't do, to live in a body that doesn't belong to him, to live in a brain that doesn't belong to him, to live with an entire software system implanted in his head that forces him to blindly follow every single rule they lay down for him and obey every single command they give him, even the ones that don't make any sense to him and even the ones that hurt him.

For the first time in his life, Hamegg thinks maybe the way robots are treated isn't fair.

"He won't care," Astro finally drops the flat monotone, but the exhausted resignation is actually a whole hell of a lot worse—like he's not even sad or scared or angry about it, like he's just so tired. "No one ever does."

I care, Hamegg thinks, and it just—it just bursts up in the back of his brain like a firework in the sky, so loud and so bright, blazing through him in a sharp storm of crystalline color and burning a black-edged hole in the tip of his tongue, and he wants to shout it at Astro, grab his shoulders and look him full in the face and tell him they shouldn't be doing that to you, they shouldn't be doing that to you, they shouldn't be doing that to you and Kusai shouldn't be letting them, and I don't care if he doesn't care and I don't care if they don't care and I don't care if no one cares because I do, I care, I care about

That last word splinters and shatters into a hundred thousand pieces before he can think it—like the scattered shards of a broken mirror, gleaming silver glass strewn all over the floor of his own mind—but he can still hear it, loud and clear as if he'd said it, echoing around and around and around in his head, beating and battering at the inside of his skull, and that's—

—that's not right.

No, that's—that's not right, that is not what he means, and that's not what he'll ever mean because he doesn't care about Astro, he literally could not care any less about Astro even if he actively tried, and he doesn't care what Kusai does to Astro and he doesn't care what other mechanics do to Astro and he doesn't care what the guys in the Hotel do to Astro and he doesn't care what anyone does to Astro because he doesn't care about Astro.

Look, maybe—maybe he does feel a little bad for the kid, okay? Maybe he does feel kind of sorry for him, but that does not mean he gives so much as half a damn about what happens to him from here on out.

At the end of the day, Astro is just one more mindless machine in a million, and he'll be gone in a week—out of the house, out of the shop, out of Hamegg's life forever, and he'll never have to see the stupid kid again, never have to talk to him again, never have to think about him again.

Skunk will get his robot back.

And Hamegg will get his paycheck.

And he'll never think about Astro again.


NOVEMBER 14 2043

12:22 AM

Astro doesn't actually know exactly when it is, because every day in here just blends and bleeds and blurs seamlessly into the next into the next into the next into the next, smearing into and smudging over themselves like wet paint on a white canvas—but sooner or later, he goes away.

And he goes away a lot.

Skunk takes him out for these long slow rides in the back of the gleaming black hovercar—he pops open the trunk with a sharp snap and a quiet click and he tells Astro to get in, and the first time he says it, Astro gets the sudden, insane urge to laugh out loud because it's just so comic-strip villain, get in the trunk like they're the stars in some kind of cartoon, or one of those low-budget fearmongering after-school specials on child abduction, but then he can't say no and he can't stop himself and he has to do it, he has to get in the trunk, and it's too small for him to roll over or turn his head more than half an inch to the side, and he has to curl up with his heavy ball-jointed knees tucked tight to his chest and his arms wrapped around his own legs, and Skunk slams the trunk shut and he's all alone in the dark and it's too small it's too small it's too small and he can't breathe and the trunk door is barely a centimeter from his cheek, closing in on him and closing down on him and crushing him, pounding into him like Frasier's big brass-headed hammer, pushing him deeper and deeper into the endless black, and he just knows he'll die if he doesn't get out right now, but he can't get out he can't get out he can't get out and he doesn't want to laugh now and it isn't funny anymore

And when it's over, Skunk will open the trunk again, and he'll stare down at Astro with that awful awful awful smile (—and how could Astro have ever thought this man was nice?—) and he'll tell him to get out, and Astro will scramble up so fast that the whole world spins around him, and the steel joints in his knees and his elbows will be stiff and tight and painful, locked up like doors from the long drive in the cramped trunk, and it hurts when the light hits his eyes, agonizingly oversensitive from all those hours in the dark. And Skunk will hook a thick glowing blue chain onto the KURI still clasped around Astro's throat and he'll yank on it to pull Astro behind him—and Astro will dig in his heels until a spray of gravel spurts up beneath his boots, but he's not heavy enough and Skunk goes too fast for him to get back up on his feet, so he's dragged over the bumpy, uneven asphalt on his hands and knees.

Like a dog on a leash.

And Skunk will hand him off to strangers he's never seen—shaking their hands and laughing with them and telling them to bring it back in one piece.

It—that's what Astro is now.

And the strangers take him away, and they tell him to do awful things—they tell him to break into locked-up closed-down offices and tech labs and federal banks and they tell him to steal, to take things that aren't theirs (—money and documents and blueprints and technology and weaponry and drugs, until one job just blends and bleeds and blurs into the next into the next into the next into the next, smearing into and smudging over themselves like wet paint on a white canvas—) and they tell him to hack into computers and laptops and CETs and PCDs and other robots (—and then they tell him to just leave the other robots like that, to walk away while they twitch and gasp and shake on the floor, sparking and glowing, helpless and alone, they tell him to let it die and don't save it because it's just a robot and it's too risky and who even cares about robots anyway, and he begs them to please just let me look at him please please I know I could fix her please but they won't let him—) and they tell him to hurt other robots with his own hands (—take down the security drones and wipe out the border patrols and disable this and impair that and rewire this and blast that and he tries so hard not to, but he has to do it, he doesn't have a choice, he can't say no, and he's got so much blood on his hands now he knows it'll never wash away, he knows he'll see the stains on his palms for the rest of his life, glossy black and sickly orange and deep red, all mixing and merging together on his skin, smudging into and smearing over themselves like wet paint on a white canvas—) and at the end of the night, they take him back to Skunk.

No matter what, they always take him back to Skunk.

No matter what, he always always always ends up back with Skunk.

And he tries to get away—he tries to fight and he tries to run and he tries to fly and he tries to hide, but it never works because Skunk always knows, he's always one step ahead and he always catches him (—it's a trap, it's a trap, it's always a trap—Skunk always knows what he's going to do, and he lets him do it, lets him get away just so he can catch him, just so he can drag him back and tell him you are never going to get away from me—) and it always ends with his hands against the wall and the white-hot sting of Skunk's electric whip on his back, tearing into him like a hundred thousand million razor-sharp needles until he can't stand up straight anymore and he slumps to the floor, gasping and shaking, his whole body alight with the agony.

When it's over, Skunk will lock him up in a cold dark room, where he'll stay for hours on hours on hours (—until they all just blend and bleed and blur into the next into the next into the next into the next, smearing into and smudging over themselves like wet paint on a white canvas—) until he has to go away again—and in the pitch-black dead-quiet of his prison, he's got nothing left but his own mind, running in circles, asking him a hundred thousand questions he can't answer, saying what's going on in the city and is everything okay in the city and is everyone okay in the city and what if the city needs me and I'm not there?

What if there's another bad fire down at the bank again, with dozens on dozens of people stuck inside, and they can't get out and no one else can get to them, so they all die because he's not there to save them? What if that crazy scientist launches another attack on the museum, and he's not there to protect everyone, and they all die? What if there's another stick-up at the corner store or another shoot-out at the cinema or another bomb hidden in the heart of the city or another lunatic with grenades in the Ministry of Science or another runaway train or another collapsed bridge or another rogue robot on the fritz and he's not there and everyone dies because he wasn't there? No, he has to be there—he has to get out of here and get back there, he has to get back to the city, he has to take care of the city, it's his job to take care of the city, it's his responsibility to look out for everyone, he made a promise to protect the people, to shield them and shelter them down to the last breath left in his body, to defend them with every artificial pump and pound of his (metaphorical, nonexistent) heart, and he's breaking his promise.

Because he's not there.

What kind of a hero is he? What kind of hero just leaves the city to fend for itself, wide open and completely helpless to all kinds of invasions and attacks? What kind of hero just ditches the people he promised to protect? Why is he still here? Why can't he just get out? Doesn't he want to get out? Why isn't he trying harder to get out? He could do it if he just tried harder, he knows he could do it if he just tried harder, just try harder, come on, you can do better than that, onward and upward

A harsh, strangled sob catches in the back of his throat, and he slides down to the floor with his legs pulled tight to his chest and his forehead on his knees, his fingers tugging and tangling in his own stiff, spiky hair while his mind runs in circles, asks him a hundred thousand questions he can't answer, louder and louder and louder saying where is my dad where is my dad where is my dad and why isn't he here yet and why hasn't he found me yet and is he even looking for me and what if he hasn't even noticed I'm gone and what if he has noticed I'm gone but he's hoping I never come back home and what if he's relieved to be rid of me and what if he doesn't even want to find me and what if he doesn't miss me at all and what if he's happier without me and what if he's better off without me and what if he really did sell me and what if Skunk was right?

What if Skunk was right?

What if Skunk was telling the truth? What if Skunk was telling the truth when he said—when he said Dr. Tenma hired me on and he asked me to take you off his hands and seemed pretty damn happy to be rid of you when he talked to me—and Dr. William Tenma, right there in stark black ink on the glowing white screen, with that funny flourish-y loop he always does on his capital T, and Astro knows it better than he knows his own name, and he knows that was his dad's signature, he knows that was his dad's hand, and he wants to say it isn't true and he wants to say it isn't real, but what if it is? He can't just close his eyes and plug his ears and pretend the possibility isn't there—he can't just shake his head and say that would never happen and Dad would never do that, and he can't just write it off as a stupid lie, and he can't just blindly trust that it's not true, because it's not like Dad ever actually wanted a robot for a son, did he?

Just because he never talks about it doesn't mean he doesn't know that he's not even a halfway-decent stand-in for a real, living and breathing, flesh-and-blood human kid—it presses down on him heavier than the city on his shoulders and hangs over his head like an axe, and he feels it in everything he does, in the way he breathes, too slow and too steady to be a real person, in the faint pulse of the Core where a heart should be, in the wires where veins should be and the iron where bones should be and the cameras where eyes should be and everything, all of it, is so glaringly and unarguably not-human.

But he's been trying so hard to make up for it—to apologize for it, to compensate for it, to show he's sorry for it—and he's been trying so hard to be the perfect son in every way he can, to be useful and helpful and needed, to earn whatever love his dad's got left to give him, but—

—but it—it just doesn't work like that, does it?

Astro could be the best son in the whole city, but his dad's already had the real thing—and at the end of the day, he can never measure up to that. He could be the best son in the whole city, but at the end of the day, he would still be him.

And no one could ever really want a robot for a son.

No one could ever really want him for a son.

And he wants so badly to believe he's wrong about that—he wants so badly to be wrong about that, to know that his dad is looking for him and his dad misses him and his dad wants him to come back home, that his dad is never going to give up on him—but the days blur into a week, and the week blurs into two, and two blurs into three.

And Dad doesn't come.

Skunk takes him out to the hovercar and locks him in the trunk and hands him off to strangers he's never seen.

And Dad doesn't come.

Astro tries to run, and he tries to fight, and he tries to fly, and he tries to hide.

But Dad doesn't come.

The white-hot sting of Skunk's electric whip tears into his back, and he's locked up in cold dark rooms and he's alone in there for hours on hours on hours, left with nothing but his own mind running in circles, asking him a hundred thousand questions he can't answer, but Dad doesn't come.

And Astro goes away to the Hotel, where it's all smooth black marble and plush red velvet and solid shining gold, with rooms full of robots that look like him—stretchy, skin-like exteriors and soft, thick locks of real hair pulled up in elaborate styles, faces all made up with powders and creams and pretty colors that turn their lips shiny smoky crimson, turn their eyelashes long and sleek and very black. And they've all got real human bodies—breasts and nipples, and all the right things between their legs—and they're all naked, sprawled out on sofas and settees and chaises and beds, angled perfectly so he can see every last inch of them.

And he doesn't look at them—he knows he wouldn't want to be looked at if he was completely bare like that, he doesn't even want to be looked at like he is right now, stripped down to his underwear with nothing beneath it to hide—but he doesn't need to look to know what's going on, he doesn't need to look to know where he is, to know that the Hotel is just a nickname, or a misnomer, that it isn't really an actual hotel at all.

The Hotel is a brothel full of sex robots.

But he's—he's all wrong for this kind of thing, he doesn't have the right body for it, he doesn't even have the right software for it, so he literally can't do things like that, he can't go inside a human like that, and a human can't go inside him like that, and he's all wrong for this kind of thing and he shouldn't be here, he doesn't belong here, he's not that kind of robot

testing, subject 7517, SAI programming, and get up on your knees and suck me off and his own hands pulling the stiff black pants down to the pale thighs and he'd stared at it, hanging in front of him, and he'd thought I can't do this and I don't know how and I've never done this before, I've never done anything like this before, I've never even kissed anyone before, how am I supposed to do this when I've never even kissed anyone before, how am I supposed to do this when I don't even know how, he can't really expect me to do this, he can't really expect me to know how to do this but then he'd just—he'd just done it, leaned in and grabbed it in his mouth and—and licked and sucked and pumped and he'd hated every second of it and he'd wanted to die and he'd wanted to disappear and he'd thought he'd choke on it, gag on it, throw up all over the floor, but he'd done it, and just like that, just like that, right there, you're so good, you're so fucking good, aren't you and hands in his hair and hot sour cum exploding in his mouth, and he'd done that.

And he never—he never really thought about what that meant, about all the—all the glaringly obvious and inherent implications of what he did, of how he did it when he'd never done it before and he didn't know how and Skunk hadn't told him and he didn't even need to be told, and he'd never thought about it, he never thought about it because it was just—it was just so much, all crashing down on him like heavy concrete bricks and blasting into him like bullets, he couldn't say no to anything and he had to do whatever Skunk told him to do, and he couldn't fly away and he couldn't run away and he couldn't fight, and then his dad didn't want him anymore and his dad sold him away, and it was all so much that he'd just gotten down on his knees and opened his mouth and swallowed, and it was all so much that he just never thought about it, but it's so indisputably evident now, staring him in the face, testing, subject 7517, SAI programming, and get up on your knees and suck me off and Skunk—

—Skunk turned him into a sex robot.

Skunk turned him into a sex robot, and sent him away to a brothel, where he's going to have to do it all over again—oh, god, he's going to have to do it all over again, isn't he, get up on your knees and suck me off and he can't—he can't do that again he can't do it again he can't do it again he can't do it again please please he can't do it again please I can't do it again please please no no please don't make me do it again please but he can't say no and he can't stop himself.

The one who runs the Hotel is a man called Jazz, dressed in thick purple velvet and smooth black silk, with a silver-topped cane in his hand and big jewel-studded rings on all his fingers and a shining gold tooth in the corner of his smile, and dark hungry eyes that stare at Astro like he wants to eat him alive—and Astro thinks he's going to do it, thinks he's going to do it just like Skunk did, get up on your knees and suck me off and just like that just like that right there and you're so good you're so fucking good aren't you—but Jazz just takes him down a narrow hallway with dozens on dozens on dozens of doors on either side, and glowing blue keypads flashing their sickly greenish light all over the walls, asking for the passcode, and Jazz takes him over to one of the sliding silver doors, and he types in the code, quick and precise and practiced, and he shoves Astro into the big empty room on the other side.

The walls are dark red with a gleaming pattern of golden roses papered all over them, and the glistening hardwood floor smells like lemon polish, and the bed is so huge it could be a castle, and oh, god, this is really happening, isn't it and he's going to make me do it again and oh, god, he's going to be sick.

One wall isn't even a real wall—it's just a stretch of giant floor-to-ceiling windows with a raised dais right in the center, so big he could stand up straight or lay down flat on it, and he can see the whole city through the clear glass panes, all lit up and glowing so bright in the black night, shining and beautiful, and he wants to run straight across the room and throw the windows open and jump out and fly away (—and he knows it wouldn't work, he knows the sharp shock of the KURI would kick on and he'd sink to the ground like a stone, smash to pieces on the cold concrete seven floors down, but that would be so much better than this, and at least if he died right now, he'd never have to do it again—) and his (metaphorical, nonexistent) heart aches and aches and aches.

I just want to go home.

Over in the corner, a small and glossy and black DRD has been built into the top of the wall, barely half an inch away from the ceiling—too high for him to reach—and it stares unflinchingly back at him with its dull steady red light.

Like the enormous unblinking eye of a massive monster.

It's recording him.

It's watching him.

testing, subject 7517, LOR programming, testing, subject 7517, SAI programming

Astro looks away.

Jazz takes him into the bathroom leading off from the bedroom, with a white marble floor and a massive porcelain tub and a narrow shower stall with thin frosted-glass walls, and another DRD in the corner just like the last one—small and glossy and black, built into the top of the wall, barely half an inch away from the ceiling and too high for him to reach, staring unflinchingly back at him with its dull steady red light, like the enormous unblinking eye of a massive monster (—testing, subject 7517, LOR programming, and bright rainbow lights flashing and popping and the big bright-red alarm bell in the back of his brain, blaring and blaring and blaring and his own body moving against his will—)

"Take a shower," Jazz says, short and sharp, with a harsh shove between Astro's shoulders toward the frosted-glass stall.

And Astro can't say no.

And he has to do what he's told.

So he opens the stall, and he steps inside.

But Jazz doesn't leave the bathroom.

And he doesn't turn the DRD off—he doesn't even block the lens or black it out or anything—and the walls are really warped, so whatever the recorder picks up will probably be all blurry and distorted and scrambled, and he's already as naked as he can ever get anyway, and it's not like he's got a real human body like all the other robots in all the other rooms, and he tells himself it's fine, and he tells himself to stop being so dramatic, you've got nothing to hide, I'm sure he's seen all this before, but Jazz just stands right outside and stares straight at him with that hungry, dark-eyed leer.

Like he's starving, and Astro is the biggest meal he's ever seen.

The spray from the shining silver spout pours down Astro's cheeks like rain—like tears, like a rushing river, like oil and coolant that's not his own—and he twists the tap all the way to the left until the water feels like fire licking up his bare skin (—until he can't feel the dull steady red light from the DRD lens or Jazz's dark hungry eyes or the sick churning in his stomach like a ship on a stormy sea—until it's all washed away in the sharp stinging pain—)

Jazz gives him away to a tall, bony lady called Clemency, with bushy brown hair and brown eyes like his, except hers are a shade darker and a whole lot prettier, with wire-rimmed glasses and a dark blue pencil skirt and black heels so high she totters side-to-side when she walks. She tells Astro to sit down on the edge of the bathtub, and she paints over his face with powders and creams and pretty colors—and when it's over, when she's done, he looks in the mirror and he sees a robot with shiny, smoky crimson lips and long and sleek and very black eyelashes, and he can't tear his gaze away.

He doesn't know who that boy in the mirror is.

But it isn't him.

"I look like a sex robot," he says, out loud, before he can stop himself—low and shaky and horrified, his insides seething and frothing and boiling over, like a pot on a stovetop.

Clemency caps up a tube of wine-red lipstick and tucks it in her white leather bag. "That's what you are, honey."

No, and he tries to say it, tries to shake his head, tries to tell her no, I'm not, I'm not like them, I'm not like the others, I'm not like the other robots here, I don't belong here, I shouldn't be here, this isn't me, this isn't where I should be, this isn't where I'm supposed to be, this isn't me, this isn't me, it looks like me but it isn't me, but it sticks in his throat and it sticks in his mouth and it sticks in his teeth, and he can't swallow it down and he can't spit it out so he holds it under his tongue and tries to dissolve it like a Tylenol tablet, let it bleed back into him so he can carry it in his head and carry it in his chest and know this isn't him.

Clemency takes him out of the bathroom and over to the bed, where she tells him to lay down flat like all the other robots in all the other rooms—angled perfectly so she can see every last inch of him, back arched and knees up and legs spread open, and it's—

—the frosted-glass walls of the tiny shower stall, and Jazz's dark hungry eyes and the dull steady red light off the shining black lens, and the too-hot water running down his back and his cheeks and dripping off the spiky ends of his hair, and all of a sudden it's that, all over again, and he's stripped to the bone, a raw bundle of nerves with all the skin torn off, picked clean like a dead bird on the side of the road, so thoroughly and painfully exposed he doesn't know how he survives the sharp swell of blazing, bone-deep humiliation burning him alive.

"Just stay still, sweetheart," Clemency tells him, and she looks almost sorry when she says it, her mouth twisting in a small, sad smile. "Your first client will be here soon."

"Please," Astro blurts out, so quiet and hoarse he doesn't even know if she can hear him, and he's not sure he wants her to hear him because he's not sure if he even really meant to say it, but it's just slipping out of his mouth like a stream of slick black oil, and he's shaking so bad that he can't do what she tells him, he can't just stay still, sweetheart— "—please, I can't—please, I—I'm not—please—"

But Clemency just smiles at him, that small and sad and strained little twist of her mouth, and it looks like it hurts her face. She shakes her head so hard that her thick brown curls bounce with it, and she pats his bare knee with a quick, light tap of her open hand. It's the first time since he ended up here that anyone has touched him without trying to hurt him—he wants to lean into it, drag himself up off the sheets to press his cheek into her palm, and he wants to ask her to please stay please stay please stay with me please please please don't leave me alone please I don't want to be alone in here, but he knows she wouldn't care and he knows she wouldn't stay, because—

(—robots don't need names and the way Skunk laughed, so safe inside his little glass booth, as he watched a room full of robots die, and it's just a robot and who even cares about robots anyway and they're just junk waiting to happen and they don't have real emotions and it's just a machine—)

"You'll be okay, honey," Clemency takes her hand off his knee, and his skin feels cold without her warmth. "You get used to it."

And then she turns on her heel and she goes away, back through the heavy silver door. It drifts shut with a low whirr, and a quiet click, and he's alone, spread out on the bed—with his head tipped up so his makeup doesn't smudge on the pillows, just like she told him to do—and he waits.

That's the worst of it.

The waiting.

It's worse than the burning-hot shower under dark hungry eyes and steady red lights, worse than the hundred thousand combs and brushes and towels and washcloths and soft spongy pads Clemency scraped over his skin, worse than all the icky oozing gunk she smeared on his face, worse than the made-up boy in the gleaming mirror who was not him, worse than Clemency's sad smiles and Jazz's awful greedy leers—it's worse than anything, it's worse than everything, and he doesn't even know when it finally ends, because every minute in here just blends and bleeds and blurs seamlessly into the next into the next into the next into the next and it's going to happen again, they're going to make him do it again, he has to do it again, but he can't do it again, he can't do it again, he can't he can't he can't

Astro doesn't know when the waiting ends.

But sooner or later, the waiting ends.

The heavy silver door slides open again, and a man he's never met walks inside—so he gets down on his knees, and he opens his mouth, and he swallows.

And he does it again.

And he does it again.

And he does it again and he does it again and he does it again and he does it again and he does it again and he does it again, over and over and over, until every man just blends and bleeds and blurs seamlessly into the next into the next into the next into the next, smearing into and smudging over themselves like wet paint on a white canvas, and it's all just a dizzying whirl of new faces—of quick, hard thrusts that go all the way to the back of his throat, too fast and too deep, and hands in his hair and moans in his ears and big powerful thighs on both sides of his face like prison bars, trapping him.

They don't all want his mouth—one man tells him to use your hands, and he can't do it and he doesn't know how and he's never done anything like it before and how is he supposed to do it when he doesn't even know how and how is he supposed to do it when he's never done anything like this before but he does it, just like that, and he stares at it in his hands, but he can't actually feel it, and he thinks I can't believe I'm doing this in a kind of numb and dull and distant way, and 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 as he palms and pumps it until the man gasps sharply, and sprays his skin with thick, sticky white.

And it just—it just goes on and on and on like that.

For hours.

One man tells him to pretend you're a real little boy, pretend you're a real little boy and you don't know what you're doing, pretend this is your first time and I'm teaching you, so he does it—he widens his eyes, and he pitches his voice a little higher, and he pretends to be a real little boy who doesn't know what he's doing, pretends this is his first time and the man above him is teaching him.

One man tells him to pretend I've taken you far away from home and you don't know who I am and you don't know where you are and you're scared of me, so he does it—he pretends to be a terrified kid snatched off the street, pretends he doesn't know where he is and he doesn't know what's going on. One man tells him to pretend I'm your master and you're my slave, tell me you belong to me and only me, so he does it—he pretends to be a slave, helplessly imprisoned, and he says I belong to you and only you.

One man tells him to call me daddy.

So he does.

One man tells him to beg for my cock.

So he does—he says please give it to me, god, please give it to me, oh god, I need it so bad, I need it from you, I need you to give it to me, I need you in my mouth, I need you to fill me up, I need to taste you, I need your cum inside me, oh god, I'm such a horny little slut for you.

And he just—he just does it, all of it, everything, they come into the room, and they tell him what they want, and they tell him what to say and they tell him where to put his hands and they tell him where to put his mouth and they tell him to what to do, and he does it, he does it, he does all the gross and vile and repulsive things they tell him to do, and it's so disgusting, and he's—he's disgusting for doing it, and it's so disgusting the way he's just blindly going along with it, saying yes to it and not fighting it and not stopping himself and not saying no and why isn't he fighting it, why isn't he saying no?

What's wrong with him?

It's like he's not even trying—he's just doing it and doing it and doing it, and he's not fighting it and he's not saying no, and why isn't he saying no? Why won't he just stand up and stand his ground and say no?

Why isn't he even trying?

Does he like this?

Does he want this?

But he doesn't know—he doesn't know anything.

He doesn't know when the last man finally finally finally leaves, because every hour just blends and bleeds and blurs seamlessly into the next into the next into the next into the next, smudging into and smearing over themselves like wet paint on a white canvas, but sooner or later, the last man takes what he wants and leaves, and he's alone, collapsed on the floor with cum all over his face and clinging to his skin like glue, and he's crying so hard it hurts, hot tears pouring down his cheeks and dripping off his chin, falling to the floor in tiny crystal droplets that shine and gleam against the pristine hardwood, and the smell of lemon polish floods his nose, sharp and immediate, and he can feel the cum smeared all over his painted crimson lips, sticky and damp at the corners of his mouth and oh, god, it's all over his face, it's on his forehead and it's in his hair. He cries so hard that he runs out of tears—the constant flow of fluid finally slows to a dead stop, and he's just left with wet trails all down his cheeks and puffy swollen eyes, and the wracking sobs give way to weak, whining little whimpers in the back of his throat, like a beaten dog, and the whining little whimpers give way to dead quiet, and he just lays still and silent on the pristine hardwood with the smell of lemon polish all around him.

And he's disgusting—he's so awful and rotten and ugly and bad, and he knows, in a sudden and sharp and unshakably certain way, that if he cut himself open right now, it'd all just be garbage and mold and decay coming out of him, no iron or steel or alloys or wires, just pure stinking trash.

If he cut himself open right now, he'd be bleeding filth.

Astro lifts his head up off the gleaming / hardwood / lemon polish floor—he can't breathe past the smell, past the cum, past the shake in his hands and the knots in his throat and the tearstains on his cheeks and the rot and the garbage and the filth inside him.

That's okay.

He doesn't need to breathe anyway.

He doesn't really know why he still does it—he doesn't really know why he still pretends to be a real person like that.

It doesn't matter.

Astro crawls over to the window on his hands and his knees, and he drags himself up onto the dais, and he looks out over the city. He can just see his dad's penthouse from here, a glittering speck of brightest white off in the distance.

He can't go back.

He can't ever go back.

Dad's not coming for him. Dad's not looking for him. Dad doesn't want to find him. Dad doesn't want him to come back home.

Dad doesn't want him.

And it doesn't even matter.

He can't go back anyway.

Because no one—not his dad, not Cora, not Zane, not Widget, not Sludge, not Orrin, not Dr. Elefun, not anyone—would ever want him again if they knew what he just did. No one—not his dad, not Cora, not Zane, not Widget, not Sludge, not Orrin, not Dr. Elefun, not anyone—would ever even come near him again if they knew what he just did, if they knew what a rotten ugly disgusting filthy pathetic thing he really is.

Astro sits still and silent on the dais, not breathing, his forehead pressed to the ice-cold glass of the windowpane, hanging above a beautiful sparkling city that doesn't want him, and he stares numbly out over all those rooftops.