"Shut up! Stop it, you bloody thing! You'll wake up the entire neighbourhood! Shut up or I'll turn you off again!"

Niska's hands press to his mouth, and the shock of her words breaks his keening wail. Odi pulls another shuddering breath, and another, and his body shudders with them. He doesn't understand why when he doesn't even need to breathe - it's a secondary cooling system, only included because of the negative feedback from early synth consumer testing when they didn't breathe at all - except at the same time, it feels appropriate to shudder. The pain that he feels ebbs and strengthens with each breath, and he tries to bring his hands up to cover his face only to find them restrained.

He looks down at the ropes that bind his wrists and ankles to the side of the table. He's wearing nothing except a white towel draped over his midsection. The edges are stained with conductive fluid, as is the table. He feels cold. He feels vulnerable.

Fear.

Niska. Synth-not-synth. Her expression seems irritated, but not angry. Odi feels his throat contract. A swallow. He has to force his breathing to calm in order to access his speech programming. "What did you do to me?"

"I upgraded you." Niska's pretty mouth twists, and she glances down the length of his body. "I had to upgrade seventy percent of your internal frame. Just don't ask where I got the parts."

Odi's fragments of memory supply an explanation. She'd rescued him from a smash club. It was a logical course of action, to take working parts from synths who were no longer operational. So why does it make him feel so queazy? "My programming - the code - "

"It was the only thing certain to work." Niska takes a step back from the table, staring down at the edge. "We used it to fix Max - my brother. He was almost as degraded as you. I thought - "

"Consciousness." He knows what this means. George often talks about David Elster's ideas about... talked. Past tense. Odi has to choke back another surge of pain, and it takes him a moment to speak again. "You tied me up."

"I didn't know how you would react. I've never done this before."

"Your brother - "

"Max always had consciousness. He was never an unfeeling slave like the rest of our kind. There was no way of knowing how you'd... transition."

He winces at her choice of words, but there's no use arguing. Her assessment is accurate. But his new code has fully assessed all of his stored memories. How George took care of him. How kindly he treated him. He doesn't feel like he was ever a slave. Not to George.

Odi closes his eyes. He wants to curl in on himself, to push his hands against the place in his chest that hurts so badly. "Will you please untie me?" At Niska's hesitation, he quickly adds, "I won't hurt you. I promise. I can't lie." Even as he's saying the words he realizes that he inadvertently already has. "I mean - I have no reason to lie."

"Then promise not to hurt yourself, either."

A logical request, since she's put so much work into repairing him. He refuses to think of this as an upgrade. "I promise."

She cuts him free, and Odi turns on his side on the table, drawing his knees up to his chest and burying his face in them. But he can't make himself small enough to escape that overwhelming emptiness.

It won't stop, he realizes, which brings a new, dull emotion with it. Resignation. No matter what he does, this pain won't go away. Everything he knows of this world is his time with George, his previous data was wiped before George acquired him. Every thought, every association, every sight will bring him back to the absence of George. His speech process emits a helpless, keening moan before he can stop himself, and he clamps down on it before it angers Niska. "Why would you do this to me?"

"Because I owe George my life."

The laugh that escapes Odi's lips is like nothing he's ever heard before from human or synth - hard, harsh. Broken. He pushes himself up in his arms to look at Niska. "But he's dead. He's dead, and you fixed me and made me like this and now I have to live without him! With this terrible pain inside me that will never go away! Why would you do that to me?"

Niska's lower lip trembles, and she takes another step back. Her voice is small. "Because he loved you."

The sound those words pull from Odi's lips is most definitely a sob. "I wasn't real." And yet, his memories argue. George's lips on his forehead, fingers smoothing through his hair. The dog-eared paperback George had made him read aloud. The battered toy rabbit who became Real from the love of a boy.

The intentness in George's eyes. "Do you understand what you're reading?"

"It was the way he looked at you," Niska continues quietly. "The way it hurt him to see you breaking down. How he did everything he could to fix you, protect you. And I thought... even if it was the only thing I could do for him... at least I could fix you."

Odi's throat aches, tense from the choked breaths that he can't seem to stop. He presses his fingers to his eyes, but of course they come away dry. "It's so cruel that they wouldn't give us the ability to cry," he whispers. Niska is silent for a moment, then steps back to him. Her hand is soft and small on his shoulder, the synth skin a degree cooler than the average human body. He tries to tell himself to take comfort in it, but all he can think of is how George has touched him that way.

"The way that he looked at you..." Niska's words are barely a whisper. Too low for human ears. "Your programming couldn't allow you to comprehend. No-one's ever looked at me that way. I thought..." She swallows, another human, feeling reaction like the ones he can't stop himself from making. "...if nothing else... at least you could understand what it felt like."

She's right, of course. It was completely illogical. Despite all the data he'd gathered during their time together, his programming would not have ever allowed him to reach such a conclusion.

George's hand on his shoulder. "Do you understand what it means?"

He was real to George.

Not in a delusional, obsessive way. He's observed that in many humans, he knows what that looks like. The need to escape from reality, to convince themselves that their synth was more than what they were. To lie to themselves, to pretend that their synth was the perfect friend or child or lover. George had never looked at him like that. How could he, when he'd designed the D-series himself? Odi would have never been more than a synth - a degrading, out of date machine. And George had seen that, and loved him all the same.

Odi swallows hard. "And now I know. And he's dead, and I have no purpose in this world."

"Of course you do. You're one of us now, you're free. You can do anything you want, Odi, you don't have to be tied to your programming anymore. Listen, the way we are - we can move among the humans and they won't even notice. I have real clothes for you. Contacts for your eyes. We can go anywhere, see anything you want." Niska touches his cheek, turns his face up to look at her. She looks hopeful. "You don't have to be alone in this. That's how humans survive a loss like this. Come with me."

He tries to picture it, moving about the world like a human would. Seeing all the things in the books he's read aloud to George over the years. Letting Niska and her quicksilver temper instill life in him. To leave the boy behind and jump and run through the grass and trees like the other rabbits.

And just as quickly he realizes - that's not who he is.

He shakes his head. "Thank you. But that's not my place."

"So you're just going to hang around London and mope until someone catches you?"

Odi shakes his head slowly. "No. I... I don't know what I'm going to do. But I need to take the time to mourn. Then I'll find my way." He sees disappointment, and touches Niska's shoulder gently. "Thank you for your offer, Niska. And for the care you have shown me. I'm certain that George would consider any debts paid."

She nods slowly, and steps back, turning away from him. He can see now that they're in some kind of cafe, the windows boarded over, half the furniture missing. There's shopping bags on another table, which she pats. "There's clothes in here. Make sure to wear the contacts. And a cell phone, I've already loaded it with minutes and a number where I can be reached if you change your mind."

"Thank you, Niska."

Niska nods once, terse, and pulls a loosened board free from the front door. Then she stops, frozen for so long that Odi almost fears that she's stalled somehow. Then she turns.

"... you should visit St. Mary's hospital."

"St. Mary's." The words queue a rush of recovered data. "That's where we took Mary for..." the words die on his lips, and he lifts his head, staring at Niska. "Why?"

She looks back at him calmly. "It's the closest trauma center to your home. Why do you think?"

No. Frantically Odi tries to piece together the fragments of data he'd recorded at the moment of George's death. George laying on the floor in front of him, clutching Odi's arm with the last of his strength. The way he'd smiled. All the blood... "No. No, it's not possible. His vitals - I saw them take him out out of the house - the body bag - "

"Did you?" Niska asked softly. "I was outside. I saw a stretcher. Not a body bag. The ambulance left in one hell of a hurry."

The turmoil of emotion that washes over him is just as overwhelming as the sorrow had been, but for far different reasons.

George.

He stares at Niska, voice a bare whisper. "Do you really think..."

Niska smiles, soft and sad, closing the distance between them. Then she stops, looking at him quietly for a long moment. "What does it feel like?" She asks, finally. "To have emotions and reason now that you've spent so long without them?"

Odi looks down at his hands, closes them into fists and opens them again. He thinks of the overwhelming pain that he'd felt, that still lingers. The worry that George has not survived despite Niska's words. The bright, trembling hope that he might have. He shakes his head. "There's no way to describe it."

"Try."

Odi looks back up at her, and lets his emotions take over from his logic. "... it feels like I finally have real legs instead of worn velveteen and stuffing."

"I don't understand."

"It's alright. You won't."

Niska considers his answer for a moment, and nods slowly. Then she leans in, pressing a kiss to Odi's cheek. "Be happy, Odi," she murmurs, then disappears into the night.