By the time we made it back to the lab with our mystery guest in tow, the sun had faded into a deep orange hue. The android laid comfortably strapped down in the back of our vehicle. Her dented torso now matched the damage to her face. Silently, I thanked my luck for her missing eyes; if she had a full face, it would have been harder to fight without hesitation. Synthetic or not, there was no overlooking the instinctual desire to spare a child.

  The teens who tried and failed to take her down were being treated at the local hospitals. They sported a range of injuries, but none deadly enough to kill; perhaps she hadn’t actually meant to take them down. Eyewitnesses testified that the boys came after her first, not the other way around. She certainly had a good case for self-defense. After a good night’s rest, if you could call it that, we were back at it again. Standing idly by in Ethan’s lab, we watched him work. I felt no more rested than the day before. It was like I hadn’t slept at all.

  “Gonna finish that?” Gabe asked, taking the last swig of his coffee.

  He was across from me, similarly slouched against a wall. I uncrossed my arms, back in my body, and glanced down at the cup in my hand. The tepid coffee in it came courtesy of the precinct's vending machine. People of the past dreamed of a future with flying cars streaking across the sky in technicolor superhighways. Unfortunately for them, the future was disappointing, but what we lacked in flying cars, we made up for in innovation. Vending machines gave you whatever you wanted to drink in fancy little cups with crisp logos printed on the side. Some people would tell you that kind of tech already existed in the 21st century, but I’d tell them about how a countertop machine could now do both ice-cold pop and steaming hot coffee from the same nozzle. How was that for employee benefits?

  “Not this time,” I said. “It’s all yours, big guy.”

  Gabe accepted my cup with a lopsided grin and toasted it to me before downing the rest in a single swing. Showoff. A click sounded from Ethan’s console.

  “I’ve got something,” he said, adjusting his glasses.

  The hum of the equipment died down and left in its place lines of text scrolling across the screen. They were generating faster than I could read them, not that it mattered; that wasn’t my job. This was the part where Ethan broke it down for us.

  “Well, don’t keep us waiting,” I said.

  Ethan paused, motionless. I could see the tension in his shoulders. It was a bad sign when Ethan got like this; it only happened when it was personal. Call me psychic, but I had a feeling it had something to do with the new detail in my synthetic arm and the way I’d been walking around zombified yesterday. Finally, he glanced at me, but I couldn’t make out the look in his eyes past the glare on his lens.

  “I’ve finished the analysis,” Ethan said. “Let’s start with the handprint.”

  “Which one?” I asked, holding up my arm. “This one or the one from the junkyard?”

  “Both,” he sighed. “I’ve had them scanned and analyzed separately.”

  “What’s the verdict?” I asked.

  He turned around and matched our posture, leaning against the console.

  “This might be a breakthrough for us,” he said.

  He flipped through some tabs and pressed a key. A large notated diagram filled the transparent screen with three-dimensional yellow forms.

  “They’re the same,” he said. “Same hand. Same model. Same damage. But you already knew that, didn’t you, Lana?”

  I glanced away.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked. “You’re the expert.”

  “Because you’re hiding something,” he said.

  “Not really,” I said. “I just haven’t told you the whole story yet, but that can wait, can’t it?”

  I gestured to our metal friend on the table.

  “More importantly, this thing was on the move,” I said.

  “Long way from home,” Gabe muttered. “Must have been up to something.”

  That was the question we were all wondering. Artificial intelligence has come a long way over the last century. Machines were no longer limited to simply pretending to think, charming us with their cheap imitations, or so their marketing campaigns claimed. Gone were the days that all they could do was create the illusion of life by running on pattern-based algorithms. Now, when companions were sold on those big fancy displays, they were sold as living, breathing companions akin to pets. This was controversial in some ways. Some argued that hardware could never match what real minds could offer; others argued that the distinction between us and them was thinner than a razor’s edge and the market was creating a legal slave class. Of course, that wasn’t my concern. Legalities could belong to the lawyers and politicians; what I was concerned with was crime and motivation.

  “It’s sophisticated,” Ethan said. “This kind of chrome and hardware doesn’t come cheap; it wasn’t just someone’s personal companion.”

  On the lower end of the spectrum were models that did little more than simple tasks. Some of them smiled at guests, others stocked shelves, but there were also the models used for pleasure. Those models were often considered tools for work or toys for play. On the tier right above them were androids who could give the illusion of true companionship: a babysitter for your kids, a maid to clean your home, a child to fill a void, or a lover to share your troubles. The android we were looking at now was unique. If it were intact, it might have even fooled me, at least for a moment.

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  “With the way it looks, I’d hope it wasn’t a pleasure model,” I muttered. “With the way it fights, I’d wager it wasn’t just a child.”

  “No anatomical features,” Ethan said. “And it’s not a child. Look closer.”

  I stalked over to take a better look at her face. Now that she was immobilized, I didn’t have to rely on the flashes of imagery I had of her in motion — first, in the dead of night, and then again in the heat of the moment. On closer inspection, she didn’t look so much like a girl. She was small, yes, but her features looked more mature, less soft and rounded. It was like she was a Rorschach test and I had read into her my personal biases.

  “What’s with the damage?” I asked, eager to move on.

  “It’s old,” he said. “The kids didn’t do this to her face. Whoever did this got to her first, but it might not be about the girl.”

  He wasn’t wrong. Whoever had this android before we found it clearly tried to dispose of it, but it could be a red herring. Reality wasn’t as neat and tidy as a puzzle box; if we followed everything we found, we’d be like a dog chasing its own tail. Tracking down its original owner might not only be more trouble than it was worth but also take us no closer to our goal. For now, we needed to figure out what it was doing after it possibly crossed paths with Cassie — if it ever did at all.

  “Why did you miss?” Ethan asked quietly. “It wasn’t like you.”

  “Don’t overthink it,” I said. “I just thought I saw something.”

  The ghost of a silhouette flashed across my eyes; it was like I was standing in front of her again. Her small, childlike frame was suspended in a moment of time with her feet just slightly off the ground and her hand grasped solidly on my arm. This time, I clearly saw her face. It was entirely devoid of life; she had no eyes to shine with curiosity or expression on her lips. However, this time, I could see the signs of maturity in her stance and face, and I recognized her as the fleeting figure in my dream. I recognized her as my almost human visitor, and then time began to flow once more. Images of her in both dream and reality flashed before my eyes right before I pulled the trigger and missed.

  “Again,” I corrected. “I thought I saw her again.”

  Ethan tensed at my words. I was surprised that was even possible; he was already stiff enough to crack.

  “You’re skipping some details,” he said.

  “Then let’s start at the beginning, at Cassie’s school,” I said. “I was there two nights ago. I went for a little joyride and just turned up there somehow.”

  “Just turned up there?” Ethan asked, looking incredulous.

  “Don’t,” I said. “I know what you’re going to say; I’ve heard it before already.”

  “Lana…” Ethan sighed.

  Gabe didn’t say anything, just staring past me, deep in thought. He got swept along by us sometimes, and usually, he let it happen. We were the type who loved to talk, and he was more of a listener himself. It was something that made us click; none of us ever had to fight for the spotlight, but I didn’t want him to think he was a bystander in our conversation. Like it or not, he was just as stuck with us as we were with him.

  “Got something to say?” I asked.

  “You’ve got a lot on your plate,” Gabe said. “Next time, share some. You know I love to eat.”

  Now that one hurt. Sometimes I felt like all I did was make them worry. The floodgates finally broke, and my tears flowed. No, they burned.

  “There’s always more,” I said. “Always. First Dad, then Noah, then my arm… Now this. There’s always more whenever I turn back around. I’m fucking drowning.”

  I paced across the room and braced myself on the windowsill. The one-way glass gave us a quiet view of the city streets below. Out there, there were countless people just minding their own business and living their own lives, completely oblivious to our own pain. They didn’t need to. Everyone was always weighed down by their own struggles. They didn’t need mine too.

  “I just didn’t want to make you worry,” I whispered.

  Then we just stood there, and it was quiet in a way that was almost peaceful, like the passing of a storm. Finally, Ethan sighed and wiped his hand hair out of his face.

  “Lana,” he said quietly. “Don’t be stupid. I’m always worried about you.”

  I scowled at him from over my shoulder.

  “But you’re worth it,” he grinned. “There’s no one else I’d rather worry about.”

  “Don’t let your wife hear that,” I quipped.

  “She can handle herself,” he laughed.

  What those two had was solid. They complemented each other like two sides of the same coin — different in all the right ways but always in sync. I could only hope to find something like that for myself someday. Part of me was waiting for when there would be more space in my life than just my job, but part of me wondered if that day would even come, or if I’d want it if it did. Noah, on the other hand, certainly would. It was what he wanted, and even after what he’d been through, he came out the other side more battered and worse for wear, but never broken.

  “Now why don’t you tell us more about how you were wandering around dazed and alone at night with a shoulder that hasn’t quite healed right?” Ethan asked.

  That was the Walker way. We didn’t mince our words while we danced around our feelings in a dramatic game of hot potato — no one wanting to be left holding vulnerability for too long. If we didn’t know each other better, it could have been mistaken as crass or uncaring, but we knew better. We’d earned our aloofness, our sarcasm. It was how we looked out for each other without having to say it out loud.

  “I was sick of tossing and turning all night, so I figured if I couldn’t sleep, I’d go for a drive,” I said. “Calm my nerves, you know?”

  “How did you end up at the school?” Ethan asked, squinting.

  “I’m still not sure myself,” I said. “Maybe I just got stuck on it, and my subconscious got what it wanted while I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “Bet you saw something,” Gabe said, tilting his head towards the stationary android. “That one, right?”

  “Probably,” I said. “Ethan, can you take a look at my feed for me?”

  After just a nod, Ethan loaded up the feed from my Iris that night. At first, it looked like there was nothing, just the same emptiness that always made my skin crawl with what I either did or didn’t see, but on a careful analysis, he caught her. It was in the artifacts left behind in just a few frames. There was that buzzing silhouette I had missed in my startled state, and who could have blamed me when she was almost invisible?

  “I swear I saw her, but my feed was empty,” I muttered. “Thought I was losing my mind.”

  “No, it doesn’t look that way,” Ethan said. “It must have some sort of cloaking ability. I’ll look into it.”

  “Why would it need something like that?” Gabe muttered.

  “There’s not all,” I said. “I also heard a rumor while I was at Cassie’s school with Gabe. It was a ghost story. Something about a woman with half a face haunting the grounds. I didn’t think much of it until I saw it myself. I think we just found our ghost.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Ethan asked.

  “Positive,” I said.