I pinched the bridge of my nose drowsily with the one arm that was still attached. These nightmares. These damn nightmares. I was sure that they would be the end of me. I had nothing to fear from them - they were, after all, nothing more than dreams - but they still frightened me to no end. I supposed, however, that was merely the nature of dreams themselves. Carbon fibre skin and dead coral pink eyes… and the barrel of a gun. It still haunted me, as if it had happened merely days ago rather than an entire year.

It made my foot feel itchy for some reason, but as I went to scratch it I remembered that foot no longer existed as part of my body. Lifting off the covers, I stared at the stump that was the remnants of my right leg. Sometimes I could still feel it, but that was little more than phantom pain. Old woes coming back to haunt me - just like the nightmares.

I shook the tiredness from my numbed head as best I could. There was no point in trying to go back to sleep now. I'd never manage it, not with the threat of nightmares constantly looming over me like a thundercloud.

I swept myself into a sitting position with my one leg dangling off of the side of my bed, reaching over to the bedside cabinet for my prosthetic. For a few moments after it was attached, I stared at my arms. The flesh-and-blood arm had thickened out somewhat over recent months. I had been going through some strength training, and for good reason.

I cast a similar glance toward my other arm, and I was met with a completely different sight. In comparison to the musculature of the other arm, my prosthetic seemed almost slender. It was more elegant than my last prosthetic - instead of my gaze meeting with a forest of steel fibres it was instead met with plastic-ceramic and aluminium, all light-grey and cleaned to a dull, unflashy finish, with the fibres and pistons only visible at the joints. I rolled the shoulder, watching internal pistons slide through the bundles of coiled steel. The two arms were contrasting to be sure, and with my current fitness regime it was easy to believe that my flesh-and-blood arm was actually stronger than my mechanical one. Sure, it was much less durable, but still.

With a yawn, I twisted the lower half of my right leg into it's socket. Servomotors whirred and clicked. Everything was fine, it seemed. I snorted. No, nothing was fine. Not in this world. Not now. I brought my hand up to my ear, ignoring the snarl of static that bounced about my skull as my implant was activated.

This world wasn't fine at all, I mused, sitting there with the moonlight streaming through the crack in the curtains. I stared at the almost bird-like claw that was my right foot. Had it really been a year since I'd lost it? The fight was still so fresh in my memory… I could practically hear the autocannon firing. That damn android…

Androids. Machines designed to mimic human life for a particular purpose. I'd gained a great deal of mistrust and fear toward them, for perfectly rational reasons, I'll have you know. I'd never overly liked the concept of robots wearing human skins, and after that incident with SF-A2 it really didn't bare thinking about. The damage, both physical and psychological, had been done. The scars ran deeper than you could see.

It was perhaps ironic, then, that the girl who I considered to be my daughter was actually one of them. I sighed deeply as I finally stood to get dressed. In particular, the image that sprung to mind was of the last time I saw her. Well, the last time I saw the real her, not any of the cheap mass-produced knock-offs being flung around.

What had truly shocked me about the release of the Vocaloid hardware models was how many of them there actually was. There were over seventy models, each with at least five thousand units and at most twenty five thousand. There were around eight hundred thousand total Vocaloids out there in the world. It really was a shocking number. Eight hundred thousand human analogues for sale - it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end just thinking about it. Yamaha were selling sentient beings. People.

The other thing that had shocked me was that nobody had objected. Not one single soul on this damn planet had thought about the situation and said 'Hold on a minute, are we buying slaves?' I mean, honestly. These Vocaloids were little more than slaves. And they weren't slaves by choice, either. As long as you were their registered owner (as it turned out, they refer to their owner as 'Master' by default. Creepy, no?) they would do almost anything you asked them (apart from actually hurting somebody because that goes against the laws of robotics), no matter how stupid, ridiculous or in fact lewd it may be. They had enough artificial intelligence to have personalities and emotions and dreams... and yet they were all still bound by a core code - Serve your Master. The thought of it sickened me to my core. Maybe some 'Masters' treated their Vocaloid well, but for every innocent soul there was a twisted one.

When I actually thought about it, perhaps somebody had objected after all. Perhaps some people had spoken up, and just as Yamaha had done with me, they'd hushed it all up. It was a distinct possibility. It set my hackles off. Today wasn't going to be a good day. I could feel it in my gut.

It was a cold, cold morning. I pulled my jacket tighter around me, no particular goal in mind for this stroll. There was no rhyme or reason to it, I just felt like walking. I thought it would help me overcome the snakes in my stomach, snakes that were squirming and writhing. Simply put, I felt like I was due to throw up.

The seams of my prosthetics were uncomfortably cold on my skin, though that couldn't be helped, laws of thermodynamics and all that. The near-frozen puddles sloshed and splashed underfoot. I had always hated that noise. It sounded disgusting. It made me want to throw up even more. Why was the world urging me to void my stomach all of a sudden?

It wasn't raining or anything, but with the blanket of cloud looming overhead I wasn't taking any chances, so my hood was firmly fixed over the top of my head. A little protection could go a long way in this harsh world, euphemism unintended.

A discarded piece of litter fluttered past me in the wind. People were so careless these days, uncaring of anything happening outside of their little pathetic bubbles. Why could nobody ever seem to see the bigger picture?

And just like that, I slipped and landed flat on my back, smacking my head on the concrete. People were so careless. I was, in the end, just another one of the people. I began grumbling disconcordantly as I sat up, rubbing the back of my head. I was John Moody after all. I couldn't change that if I tried. A hand - somebody else's, obviously - found it's way onto my shoulder, and a curiously familiar voice asked me, "Are you okay?"

As I opened my eyes, I concluded that the world was attempting to rub as much salt into my wounds as physically possible. I felt a fire flare up in my gut when I saw her face - a fire which was extinguished somewhat when I saw her worried expression. Kneeling next to me, dressed in winter clothes, was Miku. Not the Miku I knew, of course, but… It was 'a' Miku. "I'm fine," I grunted, clambering to my feet. I found myself reading her expression. "I just slipped."

The Miku regarded me for a moment before somebody, evidently her 'master' (the term still raised my hackles), called her name. "I'm coming!" She shouted over her shoulder before returning her attention to me. "Okay, just… be more careful. Please." With that, she took off in pursuit of whoever it was she was with, smiling all the way.

I found a deep sigh leaving me as I watched her leave. Well, at least that Miku seemed happy. One down… twenty four thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine to go. And even then, there was one more I had to find. I pulled my hood back over my head, and slipped into the dusky light once more.