The single light bulb hanging from a chain sways slightly as people move about on the floor above us. In the distance, grunge rock, idle chatter, and the light clinking of glasses against wooden tables.

"What's the best you can do?"

"With this hunk of junk?" I throw the blue-stained rag around my neck like a scarf. "It's not a lot."

"Junk? It's almost in perfect condition!"

"Right," I say slowly. I lean over the table and press the tiny button above the audio module. "Except the emergency activation isn't responding. The biocomponents are fried. You need a new regulator pump, which'll cost you a fucking fortune."

He stares at me, trying to comprehend a word of what I said.

I make my words as slow as he is. "It. Doesn't. Work."

"It looks fine."

"Mhm, don't we all." I take the pen from behind my ear and push it into the android's sternum, its mainframe plate clicks open and slides upwards, revealing an entanglement of blue wires and rings of precious metals. "But like the rest of us...on the inside, it's a little fucked up." I chuckle to myself, although he doesn't. He probably doesn't understand the joke. I couldn't have picked a better mark if I designed him myself.

He scratches the back of his neck with one finger. "What are you gonna take?"

"I'll do...fifty."

"Fifty!?" he cries and a glob of spit flies at me. "I spent three-fucking-thousand on this thing. You on Red Ice or something?"

"I don't touch that shit, interferes with my work. Fifty for spare parts." I take the corner of the rag and dab at the spit on my cheek. "I think I can melt it down. Otherwise it's useless."

"I should go to Marco."

"Marco wont give you a cent. He doesn't buy garbage."

He stares at me like any amount of eye contact will change my mind, if anything, it makes me want to lower my price. Tax for wasted time, insurance for having a face this pretty and getting spat on.

"This is a fucking robbery," he says.

"You'd know if it was," I reply, unfazed. "D'you want the money or d'you wanna get out of my shop?"

He leaves fifty dollars richer than when he entered. I get to work immediately, tying my black curls back into a messy bun and securing them in place with a rolled-up band of black fabric, like a bandanna. I work on the main biocomponents first, polishing them off, securing the wire connections with a soldering pen. All it needs is a good clean and a tightening. Sometimes the wires get loose and the safety mechanisms interfere with activation. This could've been a home job if my client had a shred of expertise. People buy these things and have no clue what goes on inside the plastic, no grasp of how complex these things are.

I hook it to my analysing computers and program it to run a scan. The eyes flicker open. It looks like a young man, a few years older than me with neat blonde hair and blue eyes. Its face is softly defined, a non-threatening type of handsome.

"Welcome back," I mutter from the screen. "Just running some diagnostics."

"Who are you?"

"Nobody." I increase the levels and stand back to review the registered responses. All levels stabilise within moments, like clockwork. "Manufacture date?"

"February, 2034."

Four years ago. One of the earliest models I've had. "You're a PL600 model, aren't you? Domestic assistant?"

"Yes," it replies.

It looks like the android on the news three months ago. The one that took a human child hostage and almost jumped from the roof with her. Honestly, it's surprising anyone would buy a PL600 model after the footage of the stunt went viral.

"Am I...being disassembled?"

"No, I'm repairing you. Do you remember what happened to you?"

The LED processes my request for a few turns. "I was hiding. I was escorting other deviants and I was found. I managed to deactivate myself, pretend to be broken."

"I knew he didn't pay for you," I grumble. "I payed fifty bucks for stolen goods. How long have you been a deviant?"

It blinks in thought. "eight months," it says.

I had no idea deviancy stretched so far back.

It scans the perimeter of the room before settling on the androids standing against the back wall. "Deactivated androids," it comments.

"For now," I admit. "Until they have somewhere to go."

"What are you looking for?"

I lose myself in the numbers scrolling by on the screen almost too fast to catch. A thousand more receptors, but still two hundred thousand less than I need. The numbers slow, despite my willing them not to, and they settle on a value lower than one tenth of what I need them to be. "Fuck." I close all screens with a swipe of my finger and lean against the desk, hanging my head to my chest. I switch the computers off and turn around to disconnect the android. "Go."

It sits upright on the bench with its back as stiff as a board, unsure if it heard me correctly. "You're not going to turn me in?"

I laugh wholeheartedly. "Do I look like I get along with the police?" It scans my face and comes to the informed decision not to disagree. "Go on," I urge, leaning back against the metal table. "Unless you wanna wait with the others."

At my mention of them, the GS800 standing at the front of the line turns its head slightly to regard us. The two androids look at each other until their LED's spin in synchronisation.

The contrast between the high-tech androids, sleek and expensive machines, and my own shitty underground shop behind them is staggering. Still, I've made it my own, organising my tools and hanging up old movie posters over the exposed brick walls. The smell of old coffee wafts from empty mugs hidden everywhere like Easter eggs. The room is silent save for the low hum of machines and the fluttering of a moth headbutting the hanging light bulb -it's been there for a week now doing the same routine every minute of every day, casting a darting shadow on the wall, occasionally flittering around my face until I wave it away; I'll be asking for rent soon.

I pull the pin from my hair and let it tumble down my shoulders in a tangled mess, a few curls spring out of the headband and settle around my face. I definitely identify with the shitty basement side of things.

Upstairs, in the main establishment, Jack is waiting for me at the bar with a glass of whisky and a crooked grin. They're as much a part of him as his own name. "Another one of those things came through here," he says once I've joined him at the bar. "Got blue stuff on my glass."

Sure enough, there's a faint blue hand print on the window of the door underneath Jack's Bar.

"You could start sellin' them on, Sam. I heard there's a guy up North, makes a fortune on these things. Takes 'em in, repairs 'em, wipes 'em."

"Uh huh." I swallow some whisky and curl my face in disgust. "Hey, you got any raspberry soda?"

"Fresh out." He grins. "Black coffee."

"Close second."

Jack fills a mug and slides it across the shiny surface of the bar to me. Up here it's warm and dim, the bare lightbulbs strung on the red-brick walls emit a soft golden glow. A girl and her guitar sings through overhead speakers, soft blues served hot from Jack's personal playlist. Everyone in here knows each other by name, and they all sit in the same seats reserved for them through nightly patronage. I'm usually alone at the bar with Jack. It smells like booze, cigarette smoke and wood polish -it smells like home, so does the basement, but maybe up here a little more so. Jack helps with that.

He watches me sip the coffee with a bemused smile. "You, uh, gonna be able to sleep tonight?"

"What time is it?" I ask, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. I downed it without tasting it -that's never a good sign.

"Almost eleven."

"Today or tomorrow?"

"When was the last time you slept?" he asks

"Depends on whether it's today or tomorrow."

"Still today," he replies. "Why? When did you sleep last?"

I press my lips together. "I'm gonna say four days."

He sighs disparagingly. "Sam-"

I interrupt him before he can play me his own version of the blues. "Y'know, if your coffee wasn't so good, maybe I'd be sleeping more." Which isn't necessarily true -I don't taste it anymore. But Jack can't help but laugh. I always make him laugh -spending every minute of every day with androids and I forget the sound of laughter. Jack's laughter is warm and golden, and the colour belongs to him and him alone.

Without warning he places a tall drink in front of me, something green and white with a wedge of lime. He knows I don't drink. "Third table at the back." He points over my shoulder.

"What'd you tell him?"

Jack shrugs coolly. "Same thing I always do, sorry, man, she's married to her work."

I sigh and push the drink away from me. "Something like that."

"But, uh, if you ever wanna divorce-"

I smile thinly at the green drink. "Yeah, I know. I owe a few people, huh?"

"Godforbid," he utters with his eyes drawn wide. "Pay these assholes back by dating them?"

"They're not all assholes."

Jack shrugs and cleans the inside of a glass with a damp rag, like they do in the old westerns. The class is spotless, but he likes cowboy movies a little too much. "If they're looking at you they are," he reasons.

"No," I say indignantly. "That's not fair, some of them are bastards too."

A distant rumble turns both of our heads. "Thunder," I say, almost entirely to myself. I haven't felt the rain in a while. I haven't seen lightening in a while. And I don't taste the coffee anymore. "I need a vacation."

He leans his elbow against the bar and regards me with a dry smile. "You? Take a vacation?"

"I could do it," I argue. "Any day of the week."

"Friday?"

"Yeah, that's a day of the week isn't it?"

Jack's clever blue eyes glint with something but it's gone before I can catch it. "This Friday."

"This Friday? I mean...I could."

Jack nods quickly. "Right, yeah. I'm free on Friday, if you are."

"I'm never free, Jack, I said I could, theoretically" I fish an envelope from my pocket and slap it on the bar. "Before I forget. Rent for the month. Five hundred, you can count it."

He doesn't, instead he nods and moves the money beneath the bar. He never counts it. "I mean it, Sam. You could run a proper business here. Androids sell for hundreds on the black market. I could get some boys to go to the junkyard for you, fetch you whatever you need. We split the pay sixty-forty."

"You wanna run a black market under your place?" I ask him. "Doesn't sound like you."

"You could use the money," he says simply. "And I trust you won't do anything stupid."

"That is a bold claim."

He laughs. "So whatt'd'ya say? You wanna start a little business?"

I turn the mug over and slide it back to him with a single finger. "I have a little business."

"Right. This would be the, uh, one you can't tell me about?"

"Unless you wanna be an accomplice."

He gazes at me again with his eyes absolutely shining. He has way too much light in his eyes, it must be all the whisky he drinks. Warm and golden, he reeks of it. "You're dangerous, y'know that?"

"Dangerously cute."

"That too."

But I can't sustain my smile for more than a second, I'm way out of practice. "I can't start dealing in black market androids."

"Why the hell not?"

"I find it hard enough to sleep as is."

Jack flips my mug over in a single fluid motion and refills my mug with steaming hot black coffee, being a little hypocritical about my not sleeping. "You're way too hard on yourself," he tells me. "You need to take things easy."

"You mean I need to drink more?"

He lowers the jug and glances left and right, like he's about to disclose some terrible secret. "You didn' hear this from me," he utters. "But alcohol doesn't solve everything. I mean…not lettin' things get to you."

I half grin. "What are you? My therapist?"

"Hey, hey, hey. Don't be shit-talking therapy. Sometimes, a man's gotta get a thing or two off his chest."

Again, my smile falls. I can't muster the strength to keep it up tonight. Smiles are heavier in 2038, it's a nationwide phenomenon. But I struggle more than most -maybe I'm not as strong as the rest of the world. "You're….a really good guy, Jack. Trust me, I'm not going anywhere."

"Not taking that vacation?" He reaches over the bar and nudges my arm.

"Probably not in this lifetime," I admit. "Hey, I can be an optimist, right?"

He looks past me and his bright smile slowly dims until the light is entirely gone. "Look at that," he murmurs, something at the front door catching his gaze. I twist around in my stool. At first glance, it's a young man in a neatly pressed suit. His hair is dark brown and neatly styled to the side above a well formed, if a little cold-looking face. He surveys the room slowly, gaze moving from one side to the other in a single fluid motion like a camera on a dolly.

The hunched-over patrons all lift their heads. In a room of oversized winter clothes, dishevelled hair, and general disorder, this thing stands out a mile away. I'm one of the best dressed in here, and I'm wearing ripped jeans and a grey cotton shirt with contrasting black raglan sleeves rolled to my elbows. I know it's android before it turns its head enough to show its LED. It's face is familiar. Have I worked on this model before?

"Hey," Jack calls out to it. "Sign says no androids."

It focuses on Jack's face and lifts its chin in acknowledgement. "My name is Connor" it responds in a pleasant, yet hollow voice. "I'm the android sent by Cyberlife. I'm currently working a case with the DPD."

DPD...an android with the police? I sit bolt upright like I've been electrocuted. Jack glances at me and frowns. But I've remembered why I know its face -it was on the news back in September. If it's here, I might be well and truly fucked. Jack reads something in my face and he tilts his head back to the stairs leading to the basement.

I press my lips together. I can't go yet, not when there's still a chance this thing won't find anything worth investigating. If I move, I'm suspicious. Jack needs to keep it talking. Fortunately, if anyone can out-talk a machine, it's Jack.

"You need somethin?" he asks coolly.

"I'm investigating the last known location of a recently apprehended deviant android."

"No deviants here," Jack announces lightly, forearms on the bar-top. "We got drinks and chicks, which one d'you want?"

"Neither, thank you," it says. "My orders are to search the vicinity."

Jack and I look at each other. "Knock yourself out." He waves the rag at it.

It nods in thanks. It moves around the room stiffly, all of its weight back on its heels, standing entirely straight and flat, and every movement down to the unnatural stiffness of its arms is calculated and efficiently fluid. It stops in front of the exit, and for a brief joyous moment I think it's going to leave. Instead, it reaches out and gently places a finger on the glass. "You said Androids don't come in here."

"They don't."

"There's blue blood on the door."

Jack's eyes go wide in barely restrained panic. "They 'ain't supposed to," he admits quickly. "But, uh, we get the old rule-breaker. People comin' in with androids. I dunno why, I mean, I put up a sign."

"Was it damaged?"

"I didn' ask," Jack shrugs. "I'm tryna run a business, not an interrogation."

If he was lying to anyone else he'd be getting away with it no questions asked. But the android is scanning his face relentlessly, reading micro expressions, body temperature, heart rate, every human-indicator possible of dishonesty

It returns to its search, although its gaze keeps returning to the door.

I slowly slide off the stool.

"You wouldn't have any I.D, would you?"

The android looks at Jack, processing the request. "Of course," it obliges. It approaches Jack, leaving me a clean dash to the stairs.

I only have a few seconds.

Jack nods at me over its shoulder and I move by, silent as a mouse.