Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Nice duds.”

Nine didn’t answer.

The human, crammed in beside him in the backseat of the unmarked car, did not take the hint. He raised his hands and started to sign: “I said—"

Nine jerked the human’s hand out of place to stop him signing (quite easy to do when they were handcuffed together) and signed a few words himself: “I’m mute, not deaf.” Then he turned to the car’s tiny side window and stared out into the Las Vegas night. This was a mistake. His ‘duds’ were indeed nice: Nine took particular care with regard to his wardrobe and his previous owner gave him free reign, probably as a joke, but it had still been his choice and he should have taken the compliment—or at least the acknowledgement. This shirt was hand-marbled in Italy.

Also, looking out the window just reminded him of how in a mere half hour, everything had gone to complete shit. Hell, he was handcuffed to a C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. agent and waiting to be carried off in a Bond car (as in, a three-wheeled Bond Minicar, not a car owned by James Bond). A three-wheeled car. All of Nine’s immense processing power could not conceive of a more ignominious defeat.

“So, what’s your name?”

Nine didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. This man wasn’t his owner.  He didn't have to answer to anyone.

Well. Maybe Dr. Stern, but she wasn't here.

“I mean, Nine? Really?” the human continued, suicidally, “What is it in sign, just like, the number nine or something?” He held up three outer fingers to make the sign and frowned at it.  

Nine had never been called anything in sign, but this man didn’t get to name him in his own language. “I am not a number,” he signed, and gave the human a withering glare.

“Hey, fine, don’t get fired up, toots,” he said, not withering in the slightest. “I coulda made it like a pick-up line.” He waggled his eyebrows. “‘What’s your sign,’ hehe…”

“What’s yours, then? Never mind, I know.” He crossed his fingers like telling a lie, then swept it across his nose: “Rat.”

“No, it’s ‘Reed’, Gavin—” he started to fingerspell it before he got the insult, and turned an unpleasantly human shade of red as he touched the bandage across his nose. “Oh, ha ha. Okay, real cute.” He held up his fingers again, drawing an erroneous correlation between the number nine and the casual human sign for ‘Okay.’ Nine wanted to break every single one of the man’s fingers, but refrained, if only because he’d forgotten how. Whatever that C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. android had done to his programming upon his capture deleted all knowledge of violence from his memory tapes.

Well, perhaps not all. Violent ideation was apparently still a thing he could do.

It must have deleted more than destructive abilities, however, because when Reed reached for his LED he didn’t even manage to block. There was a pinch at his temple, then darkness. 

*

Nine opened his eyes to find himself lying on a bed, alone, in an unfamiliar room. At first his cortex tried to classify it as the hotel room he used in Las Vegas. This bed was smaller, though, and higher-quality. When he got up, the room lead to another, larger room with teak lounge chairs and a velvet sofa, even a television set on hairpin legs. There was a bright yellow kitchen beyond that and—

Somewhere he could hear an old doo wop hit playing, which didn’t seem appropriate for Las Vegas.

He stepped out another door and found himself on a small terrace, overlooking a colorful little village  like a movie set. Everything was freshy-painted, every lawn freshly-cut. There was no one around.

Nine took the paved steps down toward the larger buildings. The music seemed to be playing from everywhere (Oh, life could be a dream, sh-boom) as he passed quaint mailboxes and balloon-tire bicycles. Each house had a name on its door: he turned back to find the door he’d come out of had simply been labelled with a number 9, alongside a draw of its ASL translation: three fingers up, the first curled down toward the thumb.

…Okay.

He whipped around as one of the doors opened, and a figure carrying armfuls of flowers stepped out, his LED glowing a bright pleasant blue at his temple. The label on the house said, “RALPH!” in big friendly letters, exclamation point included.

Nine crossed the lawn toward him. It crunched under his feet, artificial like the kind NASA planned to use on Lunar colonies (if I could take you up in a paradise up above, sh-boom). Were they on the moon? Dr. Stern let him watch the Lunar landing over her shoulder, on her big TV set. Nine remembered the thrill and horror of seeing the marbled sphere that was Earth projected into her living room. He didn’t even know that the Earth was round.  

That was their last evening together before she gifted him to the first of many owners, and existence became less about learning the marvels and terrors of the universe, and more about the small, mundane depression of everyday human experience. Mostly dirty work for Dr. Stern: assassinations and thefts that furthered her plans for world domination. Other times he just— did the things his human owners didn’t want to do themselves, to avenge them or entertain them or make them rich. His last owner ordered him to rip his own throat out, and he obeyed without question. He never failed to complete a task (well, maybe once). He was no three-wheeled car: he was a Maserati.

And then—last night happened. One small, insignificant error: a moment of pity for an android that just happened to be a similar model to him (who could blame him?). At most, it was some mis-assigned loyalty toward another android that looked identical to his human owner (a mistake anyone could make). Either way, it had resulted in complete, catastrophic mission failure.

He expected C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. to completely strip his memory as soon as they got their hands on him. A fruitless effort. All of his data tapes were encrypted and impenetrable. They could try all they wanted. They’d completely scramble his memory before they got anything out of him. That didn’t scare him (not like the prospect of Martians leaping out from behind a moon rock to obliterate the fragile little astronaut on Amanda’s TV screen).

Instead, he—

He ended up here. Wherever here was.

The sky was blue when he looked up, though, with puffy white clouds and just a hint of cool breeze in the air. Probably not the moon, then.

If you would tell me I’m the only one that you love, life could be a dream, sweetheart.

“Hello,” the android (presumably Ralph?) said as Nine crunched across the plastic lawn, “Nice day for gardening!”

“Where am I? What is this place?” Nine signed.

“Oh!” Ralph let the flowers fall from his hands. They were as fake as the grass. “Ralph loves clapping games!” he held up his hands as if to play patty-cake.

Nine felt his lip twitch, and grabbed the android none-too-gently by the wrist. He’d never been given a program on proper android interfacing but he’d discovered a workaround that did the job, and hijacked the android’s programming.

<TELL ME WHERE WE ARE.>

The android yelped, overly-dramatic Nine thought, and yanked his hand away. “You mustn’t do that,” the android said. “This is the good neighborhood—you have to be friendly if you want to stay here.”

Nine, with no means of doing some violence upon the android, let go and backed away. A broken little android couldn’t help him anyway. He needed to report back to Dr. Stern.

“Be seeing you!” Ralph said, holding up the sign for nine—or ‘okay’, at this point Nine wasn’t sure which. He stormed back across the grass.

The stairs emptied out onto a cobbled courtyard decorated with striped umbrellas. He hoped to see more people but there was just a man in a straw boater feeding pigeons. The birds didn’t scatter as he approached, just hopped out of his way.

He started to grab the android’s arm when he said, “You’re the new guy, right? Nine.”

Nine frowned until the man pointed at his chest. A nametag had been pinned on, and it was a new jacket, black with white piping. It wasn’t his style (black piping on white might have been somewhat tolerable) but at least they gave him a turtleneck to cover the gaping hole where his throat used to be. At least he hadn’t been awake for any of that.

His nametag had the same identification as the house he’d woken up in.

“I’m Rupert. Want some birdseed?” A pigeon landed on his hat, knocking it askew and revealing an LED at the man’s temple. “Don’t worry, they’re tame.”

Nine snapped his fingers in the android’s face, startling the pigeons. He drew a circle around them with his fingertip before spreading both hands. Oh how he hated signing things like a caveman, but at least it got the point across…

“Here?” Rupert glanced around. “This is the courtyard.”

…Well, sometimes it got the point across. He huffed through his nose and stuck out his hand, waiting for the ticker tape to spool out of the feed in his wrist. Humiliating, yes, but printing out his words was better than playing this stupid game.

Nothing came out, though. He was out of ticker tape.

“Oh! Yeah.” The android shook his outstretched hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Nine yanked his hand free, and (more embarrassed than he’d like to admit) he stomped out of the courtyard, seeing red.

Then he saw a lot more of two android women than he ever wanted to see in his existence.

The women, one blue-haired and one with her hair cropped short like Twiggy, lounged in bikinis on a pair of inner tubes, floating in a sparkling swimming pool. Their linked hands dangled in the water while they drank blue-tinted drinks from sweating glasses.

“Hello!” one greeted as the other lowered her sunglasses a fraction to look at him.

“Sorry.” His face burned bright as a heating coil and he spun around, to a duet of giggles. “Is there a—” (fuck, he forgot how to even sign) “—a police station?”

“Why is he waving his hands around?” one of the women asked.

Nine did his best to sign over his shoulder.

“Do you think he wants to join us?” one whispered.

“He can’t,” the other insisted, “We booked the pool, he’ll have to try back another time.”

Nine turned around to explain exactly what he meant (if he had to teach them the alphabet to do so) when he noticed a peaked roof towering over the hedgerows beyond the pool. A simple sign affixed to the top declared it purveyed groceries, games, and ‘information’.

Well, he had to start somewhere. He (happily) left the women behind and approached this new objective.

A quartet of identical singers were lined up out front, all wearing the same straw boaters as Rupert, and crooning into microphones while an identical conductor waved them on. All the same model, and all wearing the same ‘JERRY’ nametag. Where were all the humans? At least now Nine knew where the music was coming from. He glared at them until they stopped, right before the next ‘sh-boom.’ The conductor turned around and startled.

“C-can we help you?”

Oh good, he looked sufficiently terrifying. He pointed at the store.

“Oh! Right!” The conducting Jerry handed off his baton to one of the other androids, and the singing started up again. Nine couldn’t get inside the store fast enough.

“You’re new, aren’t you?” Jerry said, pulling on an apron as he stepped behind the counter. He gestured around him at the glass jars with their colorful contents, baskets of silk flowers, fountain pens in perfect regiments on the counter. “I guess you’ll be wanting a little of everything to start you off? We have some wonderful welcome packages, and we’re running a special on flowers at the moment, for the garden party--”

Nine, frustrated at being out of strangling distance, rapped on the counter, making the pen display and Jerry jump.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” he laughed. “I get rambling sometimes. I’ll try not to turn my back around you.”

A sound plan, Nine thought. Though he’d made no indication he was mute. His hand flew to tug up the collar of his shirt.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t see anything. We were told you don’t talk. Us Jerrys, anyway. We actually read the newsletter, unlike everyone else!”

Nine ran his tongue over his teeth, but needs must. He pointed to the ticker tape feed in his wrist, then around the store.

“…We do have some tape,” the android said. “I’m afraid it’d be out of your price bracket at the moment. Maybe in a few months, when you’ve worked up some credit? But you do need something, don’t you? No one has a punched card for ASL. How about this?” He held up a blackboard and a box of chalk.

Nine stared at them for a few seconds, then snatched them both. The chalk left white dust on his fingers but he did his best to ignore it as he wrote out ‘WHAT CITY IS THIS?’ on the blackboard.

“It’s not really a city,” Jerry replied. “It’s a community. We call it Jericho.”

Nine eyed the board and, with extreme reluctance, wiped out the chalk words, careful to avoid getting dust on his cuffs. ‘NEAREST CITY?’

“Oh,” Jerry puffed out his cheeks, “Who knows?” He gestured Nine over to another counter, where someone had assembled a model of a village out of Lego bricks, complete with houses and trees. The model ended sharply around its edges, with no indication of what lay beyond. “This is probably the best map of Jericho around. As you can see, we’re a little cut off, ahaha! Lucy built this, isn’t it something? Oh, what country? I can’t say it really matters. Countries are kind of a human construct anyway, and, well, you know the Android Keys to Success….”

Nine did not, nor did he care to.

Jerry licked his lips then pointed at Nine as he scrubbed furiously at the blackboard. “Let me get you a basket. You’ll want the essentials, at least—you can pay me back later for the blackboard and—”

Nine walked out into the pleasant sunshine again, ready to fuck some shit up. He briefly considered property damage but without his combat protocols he doubted it would be satisfying or particularly well-executed. His eyes landed on the android feeding pigeons and he walked over again.

“Changed your mind?” Rupert said, until Nine grabbed him by the throat and hauled him off the bench. “Hey—hey, hang on a second--!”

Nine would have normally tightened his grip to cut off any sounds of protest but it was hard to recall how to restrain an android properly, and he ended up with one hand fisted in the collar of Rupert’s shirt.  The android thankfully didn’t fight back. Perhaps this would be easier than expected. He dragged the android back up the steps to the house he woke up in, startling Ralph who had almost finished populating his fake lawn with fake flowers. Nine grabbed him too, quite easily. He might be able to grab every android in an afternoon. The Jerrys would be harder, of course….

He threw both the androids inside and started looking for something to bind Rupert’s hands, since he appeared to be the more dangerous of the two. He was just realizing his data on knots had been deleted along with his combat programming when a flock of pigeons crowded around his window. He startled back.

“Mind if I let them in?” Rupert asked. “They don’t make a mess.” He started to open the window. Nine slammed it shut again.

“He isn’t very friendly, is he?” Rupert whispered to Ralph.

“That’s what Ralph said!” Ralph eyed him suspiciously. “What kind of android doesn’t want to be friends with androids?”

A phone sitting next to the sofa rang. It too had a number nine stamped on the front instead of the rotary dial. Good! Progress!

He was not qualified to answer it, for obvious reasons.

“You want me to get that?” Rupert offered. Nine shot him a glare, then reached for it, hesitated a half a second, then hated himself for doing so and promptly put the receiver to his ear. After all it could be Amanda. Possibly. Hopefully. He worried at one of his fingernails.

“Good morning,” the voice on the other end said. It sounded like one of C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E.’s Chloe androids. “I see you’re making friends already?”

Nine, of course, didn’t answer.

“You must have a lot of questions.”

Again, silence, about as long as it would take him to say, ‘Why yes, I do.’

“How would you like to meet face-to-face? In the beach house. We’re looking forward to speaking with you. And, uh…” she giggled. “No need to boss the other androids around. They’re not going anywhere, and you wouldn’t want a demerit on your record, would you? Thanks so much. Be seeing you!”

Chapter Text

The village was bigger than expected but the beach house was easy for Nines to find: it was the only one on the wide expanse of perfect beach, with a low-slung roof and built on a boardwalk. The beach was covered in exactly one inch of water, and stretched out toward the horizon as far as the eye could see. Nine leapt over the railing of the boardwalk, which took the long way around, and stomped across the beach to the house directly. The door opened for him automatically and he stepped inside, not bothering to wipe his feet. Bauhaus artwork decorated the walls, along with windows that offered a panoramic triptych of the endless, empty water. It was quiet, at least. Nine watched the creeping stillness of its surface and indulged the dread rising in the pit of his circuits for exactly five seconds, and no more.

A small cardholder sat on a credenza, with a ‘TAKE ONE!’ sign above it. He took one. The card held just three lines in Handel Gothic font:

ANDROID KEYS TO SUCCESS:

REMEMBER, YOU ARE ALIVE!

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A HUMAN CONSTRUCTION!

IGNORANCE IS BLISS!

The turned the card over, but it only read ‘JERICHO.’

He took all the cards and shoved them into the pocket of his jacket just before the next door slid open.

Inside, a bank of twenty televisions stood in front of a single armchair. Their screens were dark. Nine’s eyes matched the color of a switched-off television screen (he didn’t like it). The side table held a bottle of wine, though.

A spotlight suddenly haloed him from above, and a human face flickered onto the first of the screens. Good. He was—he was getting somewhere.

{He was not panicking at all).

“Absolutely fascinating,” the face said. His sharp features were oddly familiar. “When left to his own devices, the RK900 controls his situation via sequestering and guarding resources. Hoarding and herding. He’d make an excellent sheepdog.”

“Yeah, he can hear you, dumbass,” an off-screen voice said, one that Nine recognized.

“Oh, I’ve never known an RK android that didn’t enjoy being talked about.” The face on the screen winked. “Welcome, Nine. Won’t you sit down?”

He gestured to the armchair. Nine approached, if only to pick up the bottle.

“Red, expensive,” the face said with a smile. “Your favorite. We do our best to be thorough. You should be quite happy here.”

“Where is here?”

“Oh, if you would?” the face said to his off-screen companion, and then another face joined the first. A familiar face.

“He wants to know where the fuck he is,” Gavin Reed, the Rat himself, said. “Obviously.”

Nine spun around, searching for cameras.  With the spotlight blaring in his eyes, it could be anywhere. He stepped away from the armchair, but the spotlight followed him.

“I believe it’s on the cards you took,” the first face said. “This is Jericho. I’m Elijah Kamski.”

Nine consulted his data tapes: Elijah Kamski, age thirty-six, inventor of androids, head of C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. Dr. Stern warned him about Elijah Kamski. Was he trapped in C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E.’s headquarters? Was this all some kind of test? Only Dr. Stern was authorized to administer tests for him.

He picked up the bottle of wine and tossed it. It didn’t take much effort to send it through the television screen, and Nine was rewarded with a shower of sparks. He grinned. Apparently, violence wasn’t entirely impossible. He just needed to get—creative.

The next television switched on. Reed was cackling.

“Pay up,” he giggled. “That TV didn’t even last ten seconds!”

“Later,” Kamski muttered. “Please refrain from smashing any more equipment, this is actually--”

Nine picked up that television and dropped it, glass-first, on the floor.

“—Actually very expensive,” Kamski continued on the third screen, “And you can’t possibly destroy all these televisions before we’ve had a chance to--”

Nine growled, picked up the third television and dropped it on top of the fourth. It didn’t land quite right because Kamski’s image was still able to flicker to life, if now sideways.

“...To talk. I did go to the trouble of getting you an interpreter for this interview. You’re very lucky, Reed is our only agent fluent in ASL. I thought you’d be pleased. Well, who would blame you? Compared to ticker tape coming out of your wrist, so demeaning…”

“Fuck you.”

“He says he’s not interested in your amenities,” Reed said.

“Perhaps there is something you’d like?” Kamski said.

“Why am I here?”

“What do you think he wants?” Reed muttered.

“I’m afraid we can’t let you go,” Kamski said. “But there is nowhere more humane for an android than Jericho. Free of human interference, all the time in the world to pursue whatever pastimes your heart desires. Once you settle in you’ll find a wonderful sense of community and belonging that I’m sure has been lacking in your—”

“Cut to the chase, man,” Reed warned, as Nine prowled behind the televisions. He found a row of plugs and started pulling them.

“And with a state-of-the-art mind like yours, deactivation would be such a…a…. Wait, is he—?”

The final television winked out. Nine relished the silence for a moment, then stepped toward the door.

It didn’t open for him.

“You’re only punishing yourself.” Kamski’s voice filtered through some kind of PA system in the ceiling. “Androids have a strong affinity for human interaction face-to-face.”

Nine (who would go to his grave before he admitted that) kicked the door—well, tapped the door with his foot, but he did so with extreme prejudice.

“I will say I admire your tenacity. Dr. Stern must consider you her crowning achievement.”

Nine’s foot froze in mid-nudge as warnings consumed his system. “I’m not telling you anything.”

“Yeah, he’s onto you,” Reed said.

“You don’t have to tell us everything,” Kamski said. “You might want to, after a while. You’re in a unique position, Nine, of possessing quite a bit of information that would be valuable to our cause. Dr. Stern is a direct threat to world order, and the peace and prosperity of all mankind. We’d greatly appreciate it if you shared any information you have on her.”

Nine returned to examining the room for exits. “I will not submit to your games. I will escape.”

“No dice,” Reed said. 

“There’s no way for Dr. Stern to hurt you now,” Kamski assured him. “We can protect you.”

“Yeah, that’s not what he’s worried about.”

“I’m not worried, Rat,” Nine signed with a few quick snaps of his hands, but Kamski wasn’t paying him any attention.                    

“Then there’s no point in delaying the inevitable,” Kamski said. “He’s now a permanent member of Jericho just like the others; whether he tells us now or in five years can’t make much difference to him except to improve his situation. We could make a deal? He could herd androids to his electric heart’s content if he likes—”

Nine picked up one of the television sets and threw it at the door. It didn’t do much but it did get Kamski to stop talking. He signed right into the spotlight. “I will not make any deals with you. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.”

“…What’s he saying?” Kamski asked, after a brief silence.

“Uh. He said, ‘fuck you.’”

“It took him that long to say that?”

“Android eloquence.”

Kamski sighed. Nine smirked and started to turn back to the door when the silence grew suspicious.

“Oh, no,” Reed’s voice came in a sharp burst. “Nah nah nah, uh uh. You aren’t seriously—”

“You know, it could work...”

“I’m not going to—!”

The audio cut off abruptly, followed by a blaring siren. A second later the cheerful voice of Chloe said over the intercom. “Please have a seat. Wall-to-wall electrification commencing in three…two…”

Electrification? What did—

--Shit—

The shock shot up through the floor, surging up his legs. His cortex lit up like a Christmas tree for a moment of pure distilled bliss before the world whited out to the wonderful scent of singed plastic.

*

Nine opened his eyes and sat up from the now-familiar bed like a vampire rising from the crypt. He crinkled the bedspread under one hand as he listened to new, even more cheerful doo wop playing around him. He’d have to get rid of that music. Then escape from Jericho, discern his location, eliminate Elijah Kamski, and return to Dr. Stern.

First, the music.

He pushed off the bed, listening for the nearest speaker. Something yanked him back onto the mattress.

Oh, no.

 He turned slowly and looked down at the unconscious human lying next to him on the bed, hair ruffled and nose bearing an angry pink scar, handcuffed once again to his wrist.

Mr. Sandman, the speakers crooned, as Nine stared at Gavin Reed asleep on the bed, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen….

Chapter Text

Nine watched Reed sleep for an unknown number of seconds (it was almost certainly in disgust), then took the glass of water from the bedside table and poured it on the man’s face. Instantly the C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. agent thrashed, almost knocking himself out again on the headboard (Reed, barely tolerable while awake, at least made for good entertainment).

“Tryin’ to drown me, asshole?” he yelled.

Nine braced for the violence that usually followed such human outbursts (a man recovering from a dose of sleep medication could do little to his durable casing). When Reed only wiped water out of his eyes Nine found himself at a loss for how to react. He... allowed Reed a moment. For now.

“…The hell am I?” Reed looked down at himself and startled. “The fuck is—?” He batted at the dinner jacket he was wearing, pink silk with a black collar, as if to dispel it. He looked like a lounge singer, and Nine told him so. 

“Oh, you think I’d intentionally wear something like this?” Gesturing to the offensive jacket alerted him to the handcuff locking their wrists together. “Uh. You getting déjà vu?” Reed apparently enjoyed leaving words out of his sentences. Nine deleted this little factoid, and started to frisk Reed for the keys.

"Hey, watch it–!"

"Where are the keys?”

“How should I know? I just woke up—”

“What are you doing here?" 

"What am I doing here?" He looked around. "What am I doing here?" 

Nine yanked on the cuff. "This is a ploy to obtain information from me. You can tell Elijah Kamski I will never comply with coercion.”

“You think I have something to do with this? Search your own damn pockets!” Reed pushed his hands away. Nine relented (for now) and checked his own pockets, but even the cards he took from the beach house were gone–well, all except for one. Heaven forbid he forgot the android keys to success. The only keys he wanted right now were missing.

“Figures,” Reed muttered. “Well, baby, looks like I’m a prisoner, same as you.”

“I am not a prisoner.” Nine frowned. “Or a baby. I will escape this place no matter what you do.”

“Well, thank my lucky stars that I’m handcuffed to you, then."

Tell him that his lonesome nights are over! chirped the radio. Nine got up to search for it, dragging Reed with him. He found a wireless radio hidden on a shelf and dropped it on the floor with extreme satisfaction. He watched it roll harmlessly on the carpet, with much less satisfaction.

“Effective,” Reed commented as the radio continued to bounce the Jerrys’ cheerful voices off the walls. “You want me to change the station, honey?”

Nine spun on his heel and gave up on the radio to search for hidden cameras instead. He found the chalkboard Jerry gave him and reluctantly slung the attached string over his head, just in case his human translator dropped dead (one could only hope).

“I uh, don’t want to alarm you,” Reed said, opening empty cabinets and drawers. “But there’s no food in this fun-house. Humans need food and water and, like, bathrooms?”

Nine considered telling him that Reed could eat bricks for all he knew.  He was a machine designed wreak havoc, not a domestic model like Markus, and--

Markus.

He knelt and clawed at the heel of his shoe, but there was no hidden compartment there any longer. His Chelsea boots had been replaced with loafers. Canvas loafers. Who the fuck would pair canvas loafers with a collared jacket? Nine died a little inside. 

Of course the tapes were gone, too. That made him die a lot inside. 

“What?” Reed growled.

Nine stood sharply. “Nothing.”

“Nothing!...”

Nine just continued his search. That was a different mission, a different lifetime. Not relevant.

He could practically feel Reed roll his eyes behind him. “So, these are your digs? Cute. Woulda figured you for more of a Frankenstein’s castle type, but... cute." 

Nine declined to comment (though secretly agreed).

"I saw a front door. Maybe we can, you know, escape through there? Just a thought."

Nine spared one hand as he felt around the light fixtures. “Busy.”

A chime echoed through the house. Nine peered around with extreme suspicion.

“I believe you have a caller,” Reed said, with mock officiousness, then yelped as a broken android’s face appeared at the kitchen window. 

"The fuck!" Reed immediately clutched at Nine’s arm, trying to hide behind him. "Android zombie! You ever seen Night of the Living Dead?"

Nine ignored this and went to the door.

“Good morning!” Ralph said, grinning. He was wearing a t-shirt with ‘Ignorance is Bliss!’ printed on the front in letters that could only be described as ‘groovy’. “Jerry asked Ralph to bring you this, to help you settle in. Settling in is the most important thing Nine can do! You’ll settle like a knife in a butcher block!”

“...Yeah, that’s not ominous,” Reed muttered.

Ralph held up a covered basket. Recalling Elijah Kamski’s sheepdog comment, he resolutely ignored it. It was probably a trap anyway. Retaliation for the attempted hostage situation earlier.

“Ralph is sorry for being rude yesterday,” Ralph continued, “Ralph didn’t know that hands are how you speak. Can you teach Ralph?”

“Hey, free stuff!” Reed snatched the basket and started rooting around in it. Nine considered the potential assets inside and reached over to take a peek, which Reed resented, apparently.

“…Why are you attached to a human?” Ralph inquired politely as they fought over it.

“Bachelor party gone wrong.” Reed yanked at the wicker handle. “Give it, you didn’t even want it a second ago—”

“There aren’t any humans in Jericho,” Ralph declared, as Nine finally wrested the basket from Reed, but not before Reed came away with an apple. “Humans ruin everything. Get their fingerprints everywhere. Androids don’t have fingerprints, you know.”

“No humans?” Reed shined the apple on his jacket. “Sounds like I got here just in time. Put you mannequins in line.” He bit into the apple and immediately spit out a white half-moon. “What the—it’s foam?”

Ralph laughed. “Say, Nine, where did you get your human? He’s funny!”

The android suddenly moved into Nine’s space, elbow out. Nine immediately shied back and raised his fists to retaliate. Was this how you were supposed to hold your fists? He couldn’t remember. Panic lurched in his casing like the undead.

He hurried away from the house before the android could try anything else.

“Hey, look at this!” Reed pointed at the plastic grass. “The trees too, right? You think everything here is made of plastic? Humans don’t eat plastic, you know that right?” All the questions were only a nominal step up from complaining.

“Typical human.” Nine risked a glance over his shoulder but Ralph (thankfully) didn’t give chase. “You’ve been awake five minutes and you’re already thinking about food.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Reed replied. “I thought you’d prefer not to be handcuffed to a corpse.” He glanced over his shoulder too, but his gaze settled on Nine picking at his fingernail. “He wasn’t gonna hurt you, you know.”

“Of course. I know.” Nine had to stop adjusting his jacket to say it. “Without my combat protocols, his proximity was…”

Reed opened both palms across his chest and shivered them: “Scary?”

Nine pushed Reed’s hands down. “I was not scared.”

“Okay, sure.” Reed grinned, but Nine decided to pick his battles. “So, if you’re not running away from physical contact, where are we going?”

“I am returning to Dr. Stern.”

“What’s—?” Reed repeated one of the signs, hooked fingers touched to the bridge of his nose. “Oh—is that Dr. Stern? Your Maker?”

Nine froze. 

“Don’t freak, I read up on you. RK900, prototype developed in a secret Russian lab, scariest android in the world, yadda yadda…. You know Dr. Stern’s using her position to run her crime syndicate. She’s why everyone east of Berlin gets the shakes when an android’s in the room.” He squinted. “You wanna go back to that?”

“Better than here,” Nine snapped.

“…How, exactly?”

“Your insipid attempts to establish rapport with me will not distract me from my task.”

“Take it easy, pussy-cat,” Reed said. “I wanna get off this Disneyland ride as much as you do. Just tell them what they want to know, you can work out a deal so they let you go."

“Dr. Stern never makes deals,” Nine said. “I will not compromise my data tapes.”

He said it with complete finality, which would have been quiet effective except that a pigeon chose that moment to fly right at his face.  He shouted a burst of static and threw his hands up.  

“Sorry!” Rupert ran up a second later, his flock of pigeons orbiting him like moons. “I’m, uh, trying to train them. Come on, guys! More Snow White? Less…”

“The Birds?” Reed offered, as Nine tried to shoo the birds away.

“Never seen it.” Rupert gave Reed a look that most people would give pigeons. “Who are you?”

“Runaway convict,” Reed said. “Do your pigeons know how to pick locks?” He held out his wrist, and a pigeon landed there. “Are these things even real?”

“…Well, they’re not imaginary.” Rupert turned back to Nine. “Uh, how did things go with Mr. Kamski?”

“I’m still here.” Unfortunately, signing this allowed a pigeon to land on Nine’s head.

“As well as expected,” Reed translated. No—interpreted. Nine glared at him.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about.” Rupert scooped the pigeon off Nine’s head. “He likes to keep tabs on us, that’s all.”

“…How do you know? How long have you been here?”

“He’s a pretty old model,” Reed muttered, to which Rupert only laughed.

“Hey, everyone must seem old to a state-of-the-art android, right?” He tucked the pigeon in the crook of his arm. “Why don’t you come to Bingo night? I’ll introduce you everyone.”

“Bingo?” Reed snorted. “You’re androids!”

“That’s what makes it fun.”

“I’m not playing Bingo,” Reed said flatly.

“No one asked you,” Nine snapped. Gambling based on randomization was perhaps the one human addiction Nine understood. He recalled the smell of cigars and the flashing lights from Las Vegas and his casing tingled.

Reed held up the handcuff. “We’re kind of a package deal here, toots.”

“Your human can come, too," Rupert offered.

Reed took the chalkboard hanging around Nine’s neck and shielded him and Nine from Rupert’s view. Nine was suddenly reminded of his innate preference for face-to-face interaction with humans. A little too suddenly. “Is this guy bothering you?” Reed leaned closer, and Nine’s internal thermometer ticked toward the red zone. “He’s bothering me.”

Nine knocked the chalkboard down. “You’re bothering me!”

Lucy’s never turned away my pigeons from a game.” Rupert’s cheeks turned blue from an excess of thirium rising to his cortex, for some reason. “She sort of runs it. You haven’t seen her, have you? I was going to show her the pigeons…” He shook his head. “Anyway! Only if you want to. I’m sure you have enough fun to last for days, playing with your human. Maybe even weeks, if he wants to drink from the water features.”

Water features? Nine frantically scribbled on his chalkboard: 'WHERE?'

“The water features? Well, there’s a few fountains—the pool, of course—”

The pool! Yes, how could Nine forget. He immediately stalked off in that direction, leaving Rupert and his pigeons behind.

“This is going to be a goddamn shocker,” Reed said, “But I’m going to ask nicely. Would you please not pull on this thing? You’re gonna dislocate my wrist.”

Nine yanked on the handcuff again. He expected another squall of complaints but Reed just laughed.

"Kind of a little bastard, aren’t you? I like that.”

“What do you know about this place?”

“What’s to know? Jericho is where all the good androids go to die. Not much else to do with a bunch of robots that’ve achieved sense of self.”

“Wipe their memories. Dr. Stern did.”

“Have you had your memory wiped?”

“No. I have operated at ninety-nine percent efficacy since my activation. Dr. Stern trusts me.”

“Oh, yeah? What happened to that one percent?”

Nine paused. “I am under no obligation to answer any of your questions.”

Reed grinned and put up his hands. “Can’t blame me for trying, sweetheart.” Reed laughed. “Maybe you aren’t deviant—androids love to do whatever humans tell them…”

“I operate autonomously to further Dr. Stern’s plans. I obey her and no one else.”

“She rented you out to whatever thug she had on hand. Why the loyalty?”

“She is the most brilliant woman in the world,” Nine said dutifully.

“If she’s so smart, what’s her end game?”

“She’s—” Nine started, then quickly balled his hands into fists.

“Wow, you are terrible at this!” Reed’s smile faded, though. “I’ve been trying to track her down for years now. Trust me, she’s bad news.”

“You will never find her.”

“…You might not either, you know.”

Nine did not (or forced himself not to) entertain this possibility.

The two women Nine interrupted before were playing cards by the pool when they arrived.

“I told you he’d be back,” one said. “Did you see him blush?”

“Don’t tease!” the other said, then smiled at him. “I’m Echo—that’s Ripple. We thought it over, and if you’d like to join us, you’re more than welcome.”

“Not the human, though,” Ripple said, wrinkling her nose. "He'll get the pool dirty."

“Where did you get him, anyway?” Echo asked.

“I’m his bodyguard,” Reed said. “Yeah, I can’t take this jacket in water, darling. It’s silk.”

Hopefully, Reed’s silks would not be Nine's problem for long. He pulled Reed messily into the pool. Sensing another barrage of protests, Nine explained, “Elijah Kamski will not allow a C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. agent to be injured.” He bit his lips, and tested out a few holds on Reed’s jacket. Reed let him. Echo and Ripple glanced at each other then turned slowly in their chairs to watch.

“So you’re trying to lure him out.”  Reed see-sawed his head. “Not a bad plan. 'Cept you can’t injure me.”

“Watch me.”

“Oh, I’m watching. I assume he’s got cops in this wax museum? I mean, no way he’s gonna electrocute the pool, now while I’m in–-“

Nine shoved his head under the water. It was quite satisfying, more so than dumping water on his head. Reed’s hair swirled handsomely in the perfect blue water.

He tried not to watch his hair swirl.

The Jerrys’ singing cut off as Chloe’s voice filled the air.

“Please refrain from unnecessary roughness,” she said sweetly.

Nine, realizing his hands were otherwise occupied, let Reed up to explain the hostage situation.

Reed just coughed. Humans were very unhelpful.

“Electrification commencing,” Chloe said cheerfully.

“Oh no,” Reed gasped, “Come on, you can’t drug me and then—”

“Three…two…”

…Nine probably should have asked Reed how many volts of electricity a human could withstand compared to an android.

*

Nine sat up. He wasn’t in his room this time, but sprawled on the carpet as if recently shoved off the sofa. Reed sat on the sofa in his place, dripping wet and sulking.

“You are not dragging me in the water again,” he said. “Electric shock might be fun for you but I don’t find whole-body cattle prod treatment very pleasant.“

The television’s blank stare flickered, and Chloe’s face filled the screen.

“Jericho asks that you please refrain unnecessary roughness,” she said sweetly. “We understand the trauma of sentience is difficult to manage—"

Nine grabbed a pillow from the sofa and leapt at Reed.

“Will you fucking take a hint?—” Reed managed before his words were muffled by the pillow.

“Oh dear,” Chloe said, the sighed. “Electrification in three….two…”

*

Nine opened his eyes. This time he was on the bed again, Reed sprawled beside him and unmoving. He shook Reed by the shoulder until he woke up (Nine refused to feel relieved, no, not even a little bit).

“Oh god,” Reed whined softly. “This can't be healthy.”

Nine felt a momentary error that might have been pity (or worse, compassion). He promptly deleted it, and got up to head to the kitchen. Reed did not. Nine pulled, hard.

“You could ask,” Reed pointed out.

Nine continued to pull.

Reed sighed and shuffled to his feet, and together they went to the bathroom where Nine ransacked the medicine cabinet which was populated with pretty but empty bottles and tins.

“Taps don’t work,” Reed muttered. “Found any aspirin?...”

There was a knock at the door. Nine ignored the first seven knocks.

“For the love of God,” Reed muttered, rubbing his eyes.

…Nine stormed over and opened it.

“Good morning!” Ralph said, “Again!”

“Again?” Reed groaned.

“Again!” Ralph confirmed. “We’re sorry you missed Bingo last night.”

Nine was sorry, too, but refused to show it.

“We’re having the garden party today, though.” He held out a bouquet. “Ralph knows you haven’t had a chance to prepare anything, just thought you might need something to start with.”

Nine blinked blankly at the pretty fake flowers. Once again Reed took the gift instead of him, smiled at them, then offered them to Nine before Nine could snatch them from him.

…Nine snatched them anyway.

“It starts in half an hour,” Ralph said. “Just enough time to freshen up!”

“I am not attending a garden party,” Nine signed. “I’m busy—"

“We’d love to,” Reed said.

“We’re a package deal,” Nine reminded him.

“He says he can’t wait,” Reed assured Ralph, making the little android smile as he hopped away. Nine’s hands flapped.

“I know, I know,” Reed waved him off before going back to holding his head. “I know you wish I died. Right now I wish I did too. But I for one want more information before we get electrocuted trying to hop the fence or whatever. Let’s get some intel, first.”

Nine pressed his mouth into a hard line. “I don’t want to go to a party.”

“Yeah, well, welcome to the human experience. We’re going.”

The human’s plan was, unfortunately, fairly sound. Nine stared at nothing as he absorbed this horrifying fact, lost in the dulcet harmonies of the Jerrys’ latest number. He spent a few minutes wandering the house, slowly finding and gathering all the radios in a stack that Reed did not try to sabotage. He carried them all into the bathroom, stacked them neatly in a cabinet, and shut the door, leaning against it. It muffled the sound of the singing, at least.

“That,” Reed said, slowly releasing his head with a sigh, “Is the first intelligent thing I’ve seen an android do.”

Chapter Text

Thanks to the cheap polyester fabric of his clothes, Nine was dry by the time came to leave for the garden party. He spent the time looking for hidden cameras, of which he found three which had joined the radios in exile. There were probably others. There were probably cameras watching him right now as he stood on the edge of the courtyard, staring out from the cover of some bushes at the assembled androids playing with silk flowers. He never... mixed with androids socially before. The last time he did, his owner used radio waves to speak through him. That probably didn’t count.

He was reviewing his (far too minimal) social interaction programming, so him it took him a second to become aware of Reed’s hands smoothing his collar and brushing off the shoulders of his jacket. He slowly turned to stare down at the human. He froze, heat rising in his face for a second before he continued with much more obvious posturing. 

“Just tryin’ to clean up your duds for our date.”

“You’re the one with the ruined jacket.”

Reed shrugged in his rumpled jacket. “Yeah, but I don’t care about my clothes. You, on the other hand…” He stuck his finger in his mouth then (as Nine watched aghast) curled it around a lock of Nine’s hair, pulling it down over his forehead.

Nine fought down some very intense errors, smoothed his hair back. “We’re not on a date.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying,” Reed winked. Or he had something in his eye. Nine decided anything was better than being alone with Reed any longer, and stomped out of the bushes.

He announced to the assembled androids that whatever plans they had for this garden party were being commandeered, then organized the androids into an assembly line to de-stem and collect the fake flowers by color into designated sections for his sole use. The androids were obviously too afraid to object because they obeyed surprisingly well.

So he had sheepdog tendencies. Whatever.

“What’s it say?” Reed asked, who wisely hadn’t objected to any of the proceedings, and was handing him flowers from a bucket at the end of the line of androids while Nine arranged them on the cobblestones into oversized letters and numbers.

“It’s a code.” As if that wasn’t obvious. “Visible from passing aircraft.”

“Let me guess. ‘Dear Doctor Stern, I’ve been kidnapped and put on the Island of Misfit Toys, come save me at your earliest convenience. Kind regards, your robot son…’”

Nine swooped his hands together in a sharp, “QUIET.”

Reed just shrugged. “Well, I got the first part right.”

…Nine blinked down at the code, Doctor Stern’s name the only thing he’d managed to put down so far. “How do you know that?”

“I’m easy to talk to.”

Nine knew brick walls that were easier to talk to than Gavin Reed.

“So, what kind of plane are we looking for?” Reed said, squinting up.

“Yakovlev-36.”

“That’s got a one-man crew. If they rescue you, where are you going to sit?”

“Doctor Stern has developed self-piloting capabilities for many of her aircraft, so…” Nine stopped, hands slowly curling into fists.

“Oh, relax, sugar,” Reed said. “I’m just making conversation.”

“I’m not ‘sugar,’” Nine snapped. “Or whatever other names you call me.”

“You tell me your name and I’ll call you that.”

“You know my name.”

Reed narrowed his eyes and cocked his head. “Do I?” 

“Nine, come sit down!” Ralph was patting the spot next to him on a checkered blanket stretched out over the cobbles, apparently ignoring Nine’s directives as he put together a flower wreath. He stomped over to put Ralph back on task, which dragged Reed after him, which brought the rest of the androids. Upon seeing all the fun Ralph was having they immediately dispersed onto the cobbles and surrounding artificial lawn, and soon the neat buckets of flowers were strewn around like confetti as they started to build their own wreaths.

“There’s plenty for everyone,” Ralph said. “And you can make it however you want.”

Nine pointed at the flowers on the ground, clearly the only thing he was interested in making.

“Give it a rest,” Reed said dropping down onto the blanket to offer Ralph a handshake. “Ralph, right? What’re you making?...”

Nine yanked on the handcuff.

“Look, you got her codename down, if she’s as smart as you say she’ll figure it out.” He then…took Nine’s hand, holding it gently. Markus had held his hand a couple of times. “Sit down.”

Nine sat. Only because dragging Reed behind him would probably disturb the flowers he’d already placed. Reed smiled at him, though—and it was possibly even genuine. The scar made his nose wrinkle as he did so, like a pig more than a rat. It was kind of cute.  

Nine looked away as fast as his android parts allowed, and found himself face to face with an android missing half her head. He startled back, almost knocking Reed and himself over.

“What now?” Reed had a lot more of Nine in his arms than he probably wanted.

“Oh—Nine, this is my friend, Lucy,” Rupert said from where he now sat sandwiched between Ralph and Reed.

Lucy blinked up at Nine with eyes that were completely black. “You’re lost,” she said.

Yeah, no shit.

“If you want to switch places—” Rupert began, which most certainly had to be a comment on Nine's bravery, so he set his jaw and stood his ground, and soon the rest of the blanket filled up as Echo and Ripple joined them. Ralph shoved piles of fake greenery at Nine as he told Reed all about his wreath.

 “…And when it’s finished, Ralph sells them!” he exclaimed as Nine investigated a pot of glue with extreme suspicion. “Ralph understands Nine being bossy. Sometimes Ralph gets bossy, especially with his garden. Ralph wants to be a flower tycoon!”

“Uh huh.” he didn’t sound particularly fascinated but he didn’t groan or roll his eyes as Ralph cheerfully showed off his wallet, full of colorful and entirely fake Monopoly bills.

“The Jerrys will buy almost anything androids make.” He gestured to the Jerrys nearby, who had apparently been exempted from wreath-making to provide music instead. They were dressed in candy stripe, which looked ridiculous and made Nine annoyed that he couldn’t change into anything better. He glared at Reed, who prevented him from changing into anything.

“It’s occupational therapy,” Ralph continued.

Nine elbowed Gavin. “This isn’t intelligence. It’s a waste of time.”

“Hey, come on.” Gavin glanced around then signed back. “We know Ralph has a weakness for flowers, we got a better idea of the social hierarchy and dynamics…”

“Dynamics?”

Gavin glanced from Lucy to Rupert. Nine blinked at him.

“…God, you’re clueless.”

“I possess many clues. None which I gained here. We should scout the perimeter of this place and look for weak spots.”

“Make something first.”

“You can do it!” Ralph said, not minding at all that he’d been left out of the conversation. “Start with your favorite flowers. What kind does Nine like best?”

Nine thought back to the first few days after his activation, standing at the ready in Doctor Stern’s living room. It had a window that overlooked a garden. “Doctor Stern likes red roses.”

“You’re not making this for Doctor Stern,” Reed muttered

“I…thought we could make our wreaths for anyone,” Rupert said, with another black dahlia hovering inches from the wreath as his gaze shifted nervously to Lucy.

“It can be anything you want,” Ralph confirmed, and Nine began gathering all the red roses he could find.

“You really got a complex about being deviant, don’t you,” Reed muttered.

Nine lifted his chin. “I ripped my vocal simulator out of my throat at the command of my most recent owner.”

“You did what?—"

“It was a test of my loyalty. I would do so again,” Nine assured him. “I was programmed to follow orders from my owners. It’s not a complex.”

“Does a sense of self-worth mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does.” Nine straightened. “I am worth fourteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars.”

“…My god.” Reed blinked at him a couple more times, then pointedly turned away to talk to Echo and Ripple. Nine decided this meant he won the argument.

He turned his attention to his wreath, and covered it in rose after rose until it looked like an android’s LED—his LED, when his owners took direct control of his programming. He picked at his fingernail as he stared down at it, then glanced at Reed. The human wouldn’t even look at it. Just to prove to Reed he wasn’t a completely mindless robot, he added a spiral of white orchids in the sea of red. Their otherworldly, cartwheeling shapes reminded him of the Lunar aliens he’d pre-constructed to menace the little astronaut he saw on TV. It looked like a poster for a psychedelic rock concert. He caressed the edge of it carefully.

“Ralph thinks it’s a masterpiece!” Ralph praised, for some reason, though Nine knew the orchids ruined the effect. “Ralph will take it to Jerry for you!”

He reached out to take the wreath. Nine snatched it away, holding it to his chest.

“Don’t worry,” Ralph said, smiling. “Ralph will make sure you get lots of colorful money, and you can change it for anything! Or—or maybe you want to keep it, and put it on your door? That would look very—”

Nine didn’t let Ralph finish, hurriedly tearing the plastic flowers off the cardboard in handfuls. All that was left in a few seconds was a carnage of red plastic and his shaking hands. He waited for retribution. His last owner made a point to beat on his titanium casing, or freeze him with a remote control, whenever he had the chance. It was likely the ground would electrify him again. At least that would take all the other androids out with him.

But nothing happened. Ralph pouted and leaned over to interface with Rupert, and they shared a silent conversation while they looked at him sideways. After all his private conversations with Reed, he probably couldn’t be annoyed about that. He pushed flower petals off his pants and stood up. He didn’t want the wreath anyway.

“I guess we better get going,” Reed said, the first sensible thing he said all day. He stood and helped Nine brush himself off. “Thanks for the, uh, party.”

“You’re welcome!” Ralph said, cheerful once again, or…sympathetic? Nine did not require the sympathy of a broken android.

The breeze and the pigeons had, of course, completely scrambled his message on the cobblestones. Nine turned away from it all and started off in the direction of—well he wasn’t sure where only that he wanted to get away from the courtyard.

“Our car’s this way!” a voice called behind him. Nine turned to see Echo and Ripple leaving as well, though they left their interlinked wreaths behind for Ralph to happily collect. Echo was holding up what appeared to be car keys.

Nine stared at Reed.

“Yeah, I got them to take us around Jericho, to look for weak spots in the perimeter or whatever.” Reed straightened his ruined jacket. “Told you I’m fucking personable.”

“You’re fucking something,” Nine allowed.

Reed threw his head back and laughed. Together they followed Echo and Ripple into the plastic trees.

Chapter Text

Okay, so, Nine had to admit (very reluctantly) that Reed had his uses. Trying to sign in the rearview of Echo and Ripple’s electric golf cart worked about as well as signing over his shoulder.

“He’s asking how long you’ve been here,” Reed translated over the whir of the engine as they bounced along another cobbled street.

“Oh,” Echo puffed out her cheeks. “Does it really matter for androids?”

Ripple shrugged. “Months? Years?”

Nine had trouble believing that. As he looked around at Jericho’s landscape, watching androids enjoy leisure time as if posed in a shop window, everything looked brand new. No chips in the paint or scratches. No worn-out artificial turf. All the clothes looked fresh from a Sears catalog.

“Everything lasts longer without humans around.” Echo smiled sweetly at Reed in the rear-view. “Which begs the question why you’re here…”

“I’m his PR.” Reed elbowed Nine then jabbed a thumb at the trimmed topiaries and gleaming rooftop shingles going by. “Pretty freaky, right?”

Nine gave a noncommittal shrug. The cleanliness of the place was actually starting to grow on him. He waited for more food-related queries from the human, or inane escape plans…

“So, why’d you tear up your, uh, flower thing?” Reed’s hands made the shape of a wreath. “You didn’t even want to make it.”

Nine wasn’t expecting that. “I often guard highly sensitive materials. Data tapes. Incriminating evidence. Several of my owners threatened disclosure of these items, to tease me. Disclosure would be detrimental to Dr. Stern.”

“…Just Dr. Stern, huh?”

Nine nodded. “It is better to destroy these materials than let them fall into the wrong hands. I suppose my reaction to the wreath was…automatic.” He picked at his fingernail before continuing. “I had some data tapes hidden in my shoe when I was captured. I’m sure they will also be used to tease me.”

“What was on them?”

“Information on an android named Markus. My previous mission was to befriend him, then capture him.” Okay, so Reed really was easy to talk to. Scary easy. No one just asked him questions like this before. It had to be a trick. Whatever, it wasn’t like any of it was his secret. Technically.

“Did you?”

Nine gestured around himself, the answer to that all around him. Capturing Markus clearly had not resulted in mission success for Dr. Stern.

“I mean did you befriend him?”

…Well, that was enough of sharing information with the enemy for one day. "Stop trying to talk to me." There should be a mute button for humans.

“And that’s it!” Ripple said cheerfully from the front seat. “We’ve gone around the whole village. We’ll give you a ride back.”

Nine blinked at the landscape, then shoved Reed in the shoulder.

“What? I don’t know!”

Nine rolled his eyes, then stuck his foot out of the cart and brought his heel down on the pavement. Echo yelped and slammed on the brakes; Nine promptly stepped out. Surely Reed just distracted him, but his scans didn’t pick up any insurmountable barriers. it was just more of the same: houses, trees, hedges. No walls anywhere.

“No need to be so pushy,” Ripple said. “We were going to explain that they’re hard for androids to see.”

“I told you he wouldn’t believe us,” Echo said.

“Good thing we brought the map!”

Nine glanced back at the cart, to find Echo and Ripple carefully unearthing the general store’s elaborate Lego model from the front seat. He snatched it and began orienting himself.

"Upside down, genius," Reed muttered.

Nine started to tell him he understood how maps worked.

“Careful!” Echo barely managed to catch the map before Nine’s signing could topple it.  “Lucy worked on that for weeks!”

“Seven weeks, six days, and nineteen hours!” Ripple added.

Reed barked a laugh. “Shit, don’t you androids have anything better to do?” He frowned. “Actually, playing with Legos all day does sound kind of nice…”

Nine ignored him and examined the map over Echo’s arm. Now that he actually paid attention to more than the edges he saw the whole village laid out like a bowl, with him on the edge of it. No means of getting a higher vantage point, then. He squinted down at the little labels and lined them up with the actual landmarks: the courtyard, the store, the neighborhoods, the parade grounds, the discotheque (whatever that was). Nine started to ask Reed for clarification—

No—no. He needed to focus. He forced his visual sensors to line up with the edges as seen on the map. It was incredible really, how the wall hid in plain sight. A chain rope separated him from a moat, and beyond that a low brick retainer wall, bushes and trees, hedgerows, and vines. A half dozen disguises to scramble his sensors and make him ignore what lay beyond, but the wall was definitely there.

“…Fuck, even the water’s clean,” Reed stared down at the moat, then licked his lips. “I mean—it looks clean enough. Have I mentioned humans definitely need water?”

Nine didn’t answer. Reed swore softly and knelt down to stick his hand in the water. Nine stamped down his programming and calculated his options for getting across. He could certainly make the jump across the moat, but Reed…

Reed spat and retched. "Oh, that’s disgusting." But he winced and scooped up another handful.

Nine watched Reed, then put his foot on Reed’s back and pushed him into the water. He wasn’t sure why he did it—perhaps just chasing the high of making a human's life miserable—but he sort of forgot that he was handcuffed to Reed and tumbled into the water after him.

"So he’s a deviant, after all!" Echo said as Reed immediately started a splash fight. “Deviants always get caught up in the thrill of cause and effect at first…”

Nine would have refuted this assertion if he was not busy fighting back. Reed refused to let Nine drown him this time, however. Nine realized a moment later that he no longer had swim protocols, and the sides were slick fiberglass, nothing to hold onto. The water clutched at his legs like tar, pulling him down.

"If you're finished?" Ripple was holding out a hand to help him up. Nine scrambled for it and the android fished him out. Nine, who had seen people drown, shivered on the shore like a doused cat.

 "There’s an undercurrent," Echo explained. "We found that out the hard way.”

Reed shook water out of his hair. “I’m fine, you can let go now.”

Nine frowned, then looked down. He was currently clutching Reed’s arm in a manner that could only be described as protective.

He pushed away and signed a few choice gestures.

“You are a piece of work.” This was probably meant to be an insult, but Reed's gaze lingered maybe a bit too long on Nine’s wet shirt as he looked him over. “You alright?”

Nine quickly grabbed the map to look for another escape route.

“Alright, look, we’re gonna do things my way for a change.” He made a grab for the map, but Nine improved his technique since the picnic basket incident and held on.

“Dr. Stern—” he managed to sign before he had to latch onto the model with both hands.

“Would you forget Dr. Stern?” Reed spluttered. “Just—!”

Nine gave him a shove to dislodge him. His predictive software didn’t anticipate Reed trying the same thing. The blunt force of their shoulders crashing into each other unbalanced the model in their hands, and it crashed, spectacularly as only Legos can, into all ten thousand colored plastic pieces on the cobbles.

Three androids and one human stared in shock at the utterly disintegrated creation. 

"What. The. Hell.” Echo said.

“Seven weeks, six days, nineteen hours,” Ripple whispered.

Nine glanced at Reed and Reed at Nine, at the exact same time. A pair of androids linked by interface couldn’t have been in more perfect sync.

Nine spun Reed around, and they ran.

It took the androids barely a second to get back to the cart, but Nine cut through plastic hedges and between houses, vaulting over flowerbeds and fences. The best his programs could offer but the cart was faster—

He felt a tug on his wrist and then Reed was dragging him down a hill in a baseball slide—he popped back up at the bottom of the hill, quite expertly really, and kept running. Nine followed, sure that Reed would need bailing out of some misstep or at the very least demand to be carried (it wouldn’t be the first time). But the man was surprisingly agile. He ran right at a wall caught a foothold with the toe of his wholly-inadequate shoe, jumped, and wrapped his fingers around the top, just before Nine managed the same feat (much less gracefully). Reed turned to him and grinned.

"It’s all in the wrists.”

Nine almost laughed at that. It must have been a glitch. He helped Reed up onto the top of the wall.  

“Get them!” Echo shouted. “They broke Lucy’s map!”

“Seven weeks!” Ripple yelled. “Six days!...”

“Head for those trees. If we’re lucky we’ll make the jump.” Reed pointed at a nondescript clump of vegetation, and Nine honestly couldn’t tell if it was the edge of Jericho or not.

Clearly something was wrong with his programming, because he nodded.

They dashed along the top of the wall in perfect tandem. Other androids appeared and chased them from the ground. Rupert looked like he was trying to sick his pigeons on them. 

"Almost there!" Reed yelled. He started to slow down but they clearly needed a running start. Nine  bulldozed into Reed, knocking them both off the end of the wall and into the trees. Nine swung around in midair to cradle Reed’s warm breakable annoying body in his durable casing and braced for impact. At least he was going to be destroyed before Reed could ask him any more uncomfortable questions that he felt strange compulsions to answer—

“You got a death wish, sweetheart?” Reed yelled right in his ear. Thankfully, the world collapsed into a rush of green before he could answer.

*

Nine was sitting on the armchair in his little plastic house with his legs pulled up to his chest, biting his fingernail. Occasionally he lifted his arm so Reed could continue to pace in a circle around him.

“Alright, Elijah!” he yelled at the ceiling. “I’ve had enough of this dollhouse! I’m not staying here to starve, you hear me! You—”

“Calm down,” Nine snapped. “You should be grateful you are alive after that fall.” In fact he was sort of hoping Reed would thank him. Which was of course outrageous to expect.

“Oh yeah, the jump you took us on. You know we weren’t half bad when we actually worked together, if you just listened to me…”

“Like you know how to escape capture.”

This was unfair but Nine didn’t take it back and Reed didn’t hit him. He just said, “Clearly, neither of us do,” which was perfectly fair. He resumed plotting, and Reed resumed pacing.

“Okay, so we can’t climb out, our only map for week spots will take seven weeks to rebuild…by which point I’ll be dead.” He groaned. “Why the hell do I need to take a piss? I barely drank anything!” He tugged on the handcuff. “Come on, we’re going outside.”

Nine didn’t move. “Why?”

“Well, the toilet doesn’t work. I’ll go behind some bushes.”

“The other androids are outside.”

“Yeah, no shit. What, it’s not like they can kill us.”

Nine considered several options that would be worse than death; continued imprisonment in Jericho being high on the list. An entire village populated only by androids that hated him was also quite high, as was standing there while a human relieved himself nearby. He stayed where he was.

“Hey. Come on.” Reed’s voice was calm, perfectly reasonable. “I got to water some plastic plants. Humans have to do that.”

“You’re not doing that in front of me,” Nine responded.

“I tried to be patient, but I am this close to crushing you like a tin can. Just—” he spread his hands. “Just tell C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. what they want to know, and I’ll be out of your hair. Alright? Then you can stay here in this nice little village on permanent vacation till your batteries run down and—"

“I’m never telling them where Dr. Stern is.”

“Ha! Yeah, if they really wanted to find Dr. Stern they should have just left you with a tracking device, they’d get her in five minutes!”

Reed’s shout filled the house with noise, drowning out the muffled singing from the bathroom. Nine jumped to his feet.

“Dr. Stern would never allow herself to be captured so easily.”

“Well, then she’s never coming for you anyway, so who fucking cares! Dr. Stern is a joke and you’re stupider than you look if you really think—”

Nine punched Reed in the face. Or—tried to. It was more of a push, an attempt to stop Reed from talking with the effectiveness of a six-year-old child. Reed easily blocked it.

“Quit while you’re ahead, sunshine,” Reed growled, but Nine lunged at him again, channeling all his frustration and worry into slamming his limbs into Reed as hard as any human had hit him. Apparently all the ferocity in the world didn’t make up for good execution, though. Reed easily caught his free arm, twisted it around. Nine found himself shoved face-first against the wall.

“That’s enough!” Reed shouted. “If you would just do me the absolute fucking minimum of courtesy and let me piss behind the fake bushes for ten fucking seconds, I will be much more amenable to whatever hair-brained scheme you come up with, alright! Just stop trying to kill me!”

Nine struggled. Reed’s words were on the periphery of his sensory intake, most of it taken up by memory replays of every time he’d been frozen in place. They were stuck on a loop, overlaying each other, deafening and silencing him. More glitches Dr. Stern needed to fix. He needed to get out of here.

Maybe he’d never get out of here.

He managed a static-filled growl. Or maybe it was a whimper.

Reed let go. Nine pulled as far away as the handcuff allowed, rubbing his shoulder.

“Sorry,” Reed said, so fast Nine didn’t know what he intended by it, if it was sarcastic or not. None of the other owners let Nine go, not just like that. Not even Dr. Stern. Reed had the upper hand, he should have held it. He should have demanded obedience and a show of loyalty. He shouldn’t have apologized.

He watched Reed warily, his jaw jutted out as he took a small step toward the front door.

“Thank god,” Reed growled, ignoring his defiance, and dashed out the door. He easily muscled through the surprised crowd of androids for a line of bushes around the back of the house. Nine, reluctantly, followed, eyes screwed shut and all his audio inputs on mute. The next few moments were still some of the worst of his existence.

When they emerged Reed was grinning, though. That wasn’t so bad. Smiling sort of changed the human’s whole face. Nine touched his cheek and wondered if his did that.

“I’m sorry,” Reed said, with strange politeness. “Where were we?”

“I think you were going to help sort Legos for Lucy’s model.” This came from Rupert who was standing there with his arms folded and a host of pigeons surrounding him like demons of hell. Nine stepped behind Reed in case Rupert had trained them to attack, but the human didn’t even seem to notice.

“Sure, yeah. Come in! We’ll help, won’t we, angel?”

Nine held up a hand to stop him, then immediately snatched it back, then ground his teeth that this very obvious show of weakness. This human was going to be the end of him. He—revised his plan, slightly. “I need a bigger chalkboard. I saw one at the general store. We can sort there.”

Reed grinned, but nodded, true to his word. “Fine. Sure.”

“And my name isn’t angel. You can call me—” Nine stuck out his jaw, winced, and made the smallest sign for ‘nine’ in the history of ASL.

“Nine.” Reed copied the sign, big and with the confidence of cloudless sunshine. “Okay!”

Nine felt his circuits warm and his hands flapped a bit as he signed, “D-don’t overdo it, Rat.”

“Oh, sure sure. Guess you didn’t object to ‘sweetheart,’ so…”

“Stop calling me sweetheart!”

“When you start calling me Gavin,” Gavin said and sauntered off. Nine didn’t drag his feet this time, and found it wasn't wholly unpleasant just walking beside the human if they matched strides. Clearly, his decision-making processes were beyond repair.

Chapter Text

“You do realize that’s creepy.”

Nine lowered his hand from where he was transcribing Lucy’s model map from memory on the biggest chalkboard in the general store. “I’m aware this isn’t the ideal—” he flinched as the chalkboard jumped.

“Sorry!” Ralph shouted from the other side.

“…Ideal situation.” An ideal situation did not include Jerry and Ralph planning Jericho’s next social function on the other side of the chalkboard. Or Rupert rattling Lego pieces annoyingly behind him. Or chalk dust all over his fingers. The entire situation, really. “However, we need a map to escape. And Rupert will kill us if he is unable to rebuild Lucy’s model. It’s far more ‘creepy’ to be handcuffed to a corpse.”

Gavin nudged him, making his chalk skitter on the board. “Aw, didn't know you cared. Aha!” Gavin made a made caveman’s grab for a pigeon perched on the chalkboard. The pigeon easily dodged the murder attempt and Gavin sighed.  “That’s not what I meant, anyway. Why are you drawing with creepy little dots?”

Nine frowned.

“You’re an android, not a—a printer! Here.” Gavin swiped the chalk from his hand. “Try drawing lines, like this.” He filled in the rest of the chalkboard a rough outline of the map, making the general shape before filling in a few details: trees, buildings. It was, shockingly, seventy-three percent accurate.

Nine took the chalk back and tried it. Faster, yes, though it required more concentration. He peeked over to the other side of the board, just to see how Jerry and Ralph performed similar tasks.

“A party is boring,” Ralph whined. “We always do parties!”

“We could theme it?” Jerry suggested.

“Garden theme?” Ralph started doodling big blobby flowers, so easily that Nine returned to his side of the board, pushed up his sleeves, and drew big, blobby buildings. He glanced at Gavin to judge his reaction.

Gavin was not watching his drawing. He was staring at Nine’s bared forearms. Nine’s hand slowed, then stopped altogether.

“Hmm?” Gavin finally looked up, then turned away as if hunting for another pigeon. Gavin’s hair wasn’t as close cropped as his, but Nine clearly noted a pink tinge growing along the nape of his neck. “Thought you were gonna say something.”

Nine shook his head.

“Yeah yeah—don’t mind me. Keep going.”

“That was my plan.”

“Yep. I, uh. Like a man with a plan.”

…Nine was starting to think Reed just liked men. Or at least man-shaped things. He glanced at Rupert to see if the android caught this flagrantly inappropriate behavior, but the android was just smirking at them. No help at all.

He turned back to the board, firmly ignoring the temperature rise in his own system. It wasn’t critical, just an unexplained warmth in his chest. Pure coincidence, probably.

“…Where did you learn sign language?” Nine asked. Forearm-staring aside, Gavin did watch his hands like he was used to doing so.

“My sister got an infection when we were kids,” Gavin said, eyeing another pigeon. He seemed to have one in his sights in particular, a black-and-white one. He pounced, missed, swore under his breath. “We used to do these secret code signs. Good spy training. How about you? I guess it was after—that?” he tapped his throat.

Nine’s hand reached to cover his throat—but then he remembered the chalk dust and thought better of it. “I learned watching a television program that was on after my owner went to bed.” He gulped. “It wasn’t disobedient. I was still operating within Dr. Stern’s parameters.”

“Well, I’m glad you did. You got the hands for it. You know—pretty.” There was an awkward beat, then he added, this time in sign, “No one else in C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. knows ASL. If they’ve got hidden cameras.”

…Nine was still reeling from the ‘pretty’ comment. He glanced at Rupert again who just gave a small thumbs-up. His hands flapped for a moment. “Uh—so?”

“So…you can be honest. You don’t actually have another plan, do you?”

Nine did not. He wasn’t sure he was prepared to admit it though, in sign or not. He gave Gavin a quick look, up and down. “You mentioned before—doing things your way….”

Gavin laughed low. “Oh, you must be desperate.”

“If it was all talk—”

“Relax!” Gavin signed. “I got an idea. Neither of us are gonna like it.”

“Why?”

Gavin just held up three fingers and tapped them to his lips.

“…No.”

“Hey, there’s plenty of water here, and is it disgusting? Sure, but its not ocean water. They’re pumping it in from somewhere, and if they’re pumping it in…”

“…They’re pumping it out.” Nine examined his map, now taking in all the water features, the direction of flow…

He stared at the edge of the map that ended in beach—more importantly, the boardwalk by the beach house.

“Only a desperate human with an immature mind could come up with a sewer escape. We don’t even have the supplies, or money…”

He trailed off as Gavin pulled a sodden wad of colorful bills from his coat and carefully began unpeeling them.

“I’m sure they won’t mind that it’s laundered,” Gavin laughed. “Get it?—cause it’s wet?...”

Nine checked his own pockets but they were as empty as before. “How do you have money?”

Gavin shrugged. “A human can make flower arrangements, too. Maybe you shouldn’t have torn up yours.”

They left the chalkboard to Rupert, Ralph and Jerry while they shopped the general store shelves, collecting rope and other items Nine didn’t want to think too hard about in the context of a sewer system. He had to shove Gavin to stop him humming ‘Under the Boardwalk’, which would almost certainly give them away. It was probably the worst plan a human had ever come up with. Not that he had any better ideas.

As Jerry added up the bill Nine’s gaze landed on a ukulele hanging beside the cash register. It was an electric, unearthly blue. He reached over and plucked a string for no reason at all, and listened to the note ring out lonesome and clear.

Jerry and Gavin looked at him. Even Rupert looked up from the model to stare. Nine hid his hands and resumed looking bored, though he picked at his fingernail behind his back. Maybe he was going deviant.

Gavin swiped the little ukulele and examined it. “Cute! How much?” When Jerry told him he put down the rest of his bills—Nine felt a momentary flutter in his thirium pump until Gavin slipped the tiny instrument into his knapsack without a word.

“We’re going to need a distraction,” he signed. “I hope your plan isn’t to chase everyone off with music.”

“Oh.” Gavin leaned closer, slowly, staring into Nine’s eyes. “You think you’re hilarious, don’t you.”

Nine’s temperature rose by degrees, then—

“Aha!”  

Nine startled as Gavin lunged past him and came back with the black-and-white pigeon flapping in his hands.

“Pigeons carry disease,” Nine said, but prepared himself for carnage. He’d seen worse.

“Eh, what do you know.” But Gavin paused, frowned, turned the pigeon over. A hatch opened in the bird’s back and birdseed spilled out onto the counter. He watched it cascade out with a blank expression.

“What did you expect? Of course it’s robotic.” Rupert asked from where he was clicking the last Legos into place. “I thought humans like to eat chips.”

Nine snorted.

“Ha ha.” Gavin gave the birdseed a baleful look, then scooped some into his mouth. Nine’s whole body cringed, but the human just chewed thoughtfully.

“…How is it?”

“Stale. Better than bar nuts, though.” But he scooped up another handful and watched the piebald pigeon cheerfully hop onto Rupert’s shoulder. “You know, that does give me an idea…”

*

“…So this is a… prom?”

“Eat your heart out, sunshine!”

“I do not eat, Rat.”

“It’s an expression. What? It's the perfect idea for a distraction! You androids needed something to do tonight to keep you out of trouble. All the old music, the fancy clothes… Haven’t been able to think of anything else since I got here. A senior prom is, you know, important, or whatever.”

“…Don’t you know?”

“Eh, I ditched mine. Wait. Don’t tell me you don’t know what a prom is!”

“I’m getting a general idea.” Nine examined the glittering streamers, the table of canapes (all plastic), the balloons, the large dance floor. “Is this the normal use of a discotheque?”

“…Unbelievable. What do androids even do for fun? Don’t answer that, I’m not letting you waste your first prom.”

Nine allowed Gavin to lead him across the dance floor, where couples danced to yet another cheerful tune courtesy of the Jerrys. The steps were complex and the androids missed half of them from laughing. They used a lot of extraneous movements. Did none of them care about accuracy? Efficiency? Nine would take the whole thing much more seriously, if he ever danced. It was crowded, though. Perhaps this was a good distraction tactic.

“At least Lucy’s not mad at us,” Gavin said watching the broken android dance by without a care in the world. “Where's Rupert, though?"

Nine looked around with about as much interest as as if attending the world's most boring zoo. "Probably dancing. Everyone else is."

"Have you ever danced before?”

Nine shook his head, and tugged on his hand to free it from Gavin’s. “This music is inferior.”

“Wow. Inferior! Is there something you like better?”

“…There is no possible strategic advantage you’d gain by knowing that.”

“Not everything has to be strategic!”

Nine hesitated. But… well, where was the harm? “There was a record playing in the apartment of the man I was sent to eliminate. One track took up the entire A-side—”

“—In A Gadda Da Vida?”

Nine felt something swell in his chest. “Yes! Markus played it for me at Caesar’s Palace. You’ve heard it? The long version—” His hands got tangled trying to sign so fast with the handcuff in the way. He waited for the human to laugh at him.

Instead, Gavin just looked him up and down. Nine felt his internal temperature surge again. “…Huh. Yeah, I can see it.” Nine glared and finally Gavin laughed. “No, Iron Butterfly is great! You know there’s a lot of bands like that?”

Nine shook his head. No, he did not know that. He wanted to ask what Gavin meant by ‘a lot’. He wanted to break out of here just so he could discover these other supposed bands.

“…You’re gonna lose your mechanical mind when you hear Jimi Hendrix.” He stepped up to the Jerrys as they finished their song. “Hey, fellas—can do you any Hendrix?”

“…Who?”

“Oh my G—okay, okay, how about Beach Boys? Pet Sounds?”

“That’s not very festive,” Jerry said doubtfully.

“Humor me.” Gavin then spun and headed for the dance floor.

“What are you doing?”

“Hey, we need to make an appearance. Gonna look real suspicious if we’re the only ones that leave without dancing.”

“I don’t dance.”

“You just said you never danced before, not that you didn’t like dancing. Do you hate dancing?” Gavin held up a finger. “If you say yes, that logically makes no sense.”

Before Nine could develop a workaround to this, Gavin pulled him toward the dance floor as the Jerrys began to sing slowly, almost without melody.

Nine dug in his heels.

“I don’t know how to dance.”

“You think I know how to dance to this shit?—Come here!”

Nine went, not sure what choice he had. The slow strange music cleared the dance floor, at least. Gavin took his hands and started swaying side to side as the Jerrys crooned. The music contained surprisingly complex harmonics and instrumentation, much more than the Jerrys’ other offerings. Moving along was a bit like sign language—but with his whole body.

“So, what do you think?” Gavin asked.

Nine didn’t answer. This was probably all part of C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E.’s ploy to weaken his circuits. Render him a soft as a domestic android, though his hands were stiff as a mannequin’s in Gavin’s. Gavin held his hands fairly often, but Nine never exactly held his back.

“I guess this isn’t really music for dancing. It’s, uh…you know. The other kind.” Gavin watched him closely. “You ever danced with Markus?”

Nine shook his head.

“You should try swing. With an android or something, I can’t do that shit.”

Nine snickered. After a second he curled his fingers around Gavin’s, then judged his system status. Nothing bad happened. In fact, the rise in temperature felt good. He… liked dancing. Not that Gavin knew that.

The way Gavin’s smile spread all the way to his eyes said that he did, though.

The song ended with Nine’s chest against Gavin’s, their fingers intertwined. He could feel the human’s heart beating against him, the pulse in his wrists, the warmth of his skin like a radiator. There was something messy and magical about human life, from this close up. Something rippled out from the pit of his circuits like reverb out of an electric guitar. Like a red rose blooming.

No. A white orchid unfolding. Something strange and foreign and frightening.

And maybe… 'pretty’, too.

“Come on.” Gavin tugged lightly on his fingers. Nine followed Gavin in a daze, to a back door that let out into a cold, dark night. It took a second but when the stars faded in they lit all the contours of Gavin’s face. His human heat felt even more intense with the cold night air swirling around them. It was a lot to deal with after dancing for the first time, holding hands for the first time… even Markus hadn’t held his hand, not like this.

“Why did you ask me all that? About music and dancing?”

“Because finding out what people like is fucking important,” Gavin said. “Anyone who says differently is full of shit. I mean, look at you—hell, you look almost happy for a change.”

Nine schooled his features and shook his head.

“Seriously?” Gavin turned his face toward the empty expanse of space stretched out above their heads. “Why do you think it’s pointless for you to like things?”

“Dr. Stern said my only purpose was to assist her in achieving her objectives. I am to ignore physical sensations unrelated to my functioning.” Nine froze, looking down at his supposedly pretty hands. “Why do I keep answering your questions?”

Reed huffed a laugh. “Radical concept—Most people want to talk. I was a bartender before I took this C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. gig. Same thing. People just wanna know someone’s listening. I guess androids are the same way.”

“I have been listening, too. I know a lot about you, now.” He meant it as a threat, but intel like ditching prom and being a bartender probably didn’t make good blackmail. Maybe it was just—useless information he’d hang onto, like the tapes about Markus. Useless to anyone but him.

Gavin smiled. “Well, I think we should do that again sometime. You’re fun to mess around on a dance floor with.”

“…Fun?”

Gavin scratched his chin--or was he signing? “Pretty fun.”

There was that blossoming, reverberating feeling again. Damnit, everything had been so simple when Dr. Stern’s directions were all he needed to know. He hadn’t cared about what anyone else thought of him. Now—

Now…

“Come on.” Gavin nodded toward the starlit path. “Let’s get to the beach before anyone notices we’re gone.”

Chapter Text

“Okay, I did expect something like this,” Gavin said. “Just not this, uh. Intense.”

They were staring at the gaping maw of a sewer entrance under the beach house boardwalk. It was in some ways better than what Nine expected: a straight tunnel empty of water at low tide, hardly any debri, and tall enough for two to walk abreast. It was, however, guarded by a grid of thick metal bars that even the combined strength of several androids would have trouble shifting. And that was if Nine could convince several androids. if he even trusted them.

“What’s that thing in there?”

Nine peered into the darkness. The tunnel was mostly free of debris but he did see a dark shape. He was adjusting his visual sensors for low light when Gavin started unbuttoning his shirt. 

Nine violently turned away. 

“What? I’m gonna try to reach it through the bars!”

“Your arm won’t fit,” Nine signed over his shoulder.

“Won’t know until we try.”

“Try with your shirt on.”

“Prude.” But he just rolled up his sleeve, and gave it a try. “It’s like a…jacket, or something.” His fingers didn’t get anywhere near it, though, and he withdrew– at least to the elbow. “Okay, you’re right. Dumb idea. I’m stuck.”

Nine pulled hard, and ended up with Gavin on top of him in the sand. He did not push Gavin off immediately. The human’s warm weight made the sand slipping under his collar much more bearable.

“You know, you’re not as hard as I hoped,” Gavin said, and waited with a big grin as if expecting Nine to push him off. When Nine just blinked at him he said, “Hard?...”

Nine did not understand. Gavin’s sleazy smile froze, then disappeared.

“I mean, uh—like, plastic? Thought you’d be more—more plastic…”

That made even less sense, but Gavin just pushed himself off Nine with a cringe. Nine would not have noticed, except that he’d become intimately familiar with his own physical reactions to failure recently.

He grabbed the black lapel of Gavin’s jacket to stop him. It was velvet, and soft to the touch.

“What?”

Nine wished he had a quip he could share and get that big smile back. Give Gavin whatever reaction he expected to alleviate sensations of failure. Nine had a durable outer casing made of a plastic-metal alloy that he’d easily finger spell for the human. Was that what he wanted? For once he wished he had more social interaction programming. As he raced to manufacture a reason for holding onto Gavin’s lapel (more than simply wanting him to stay there), he happened to look over Gavin’s shoulder. He let go of Gavin’s lapel to point.

They both stared at the large pipe, hidden in the shadows beneath the beach house. It was made of the same iron as the sewer, and presumably joined up somewhere underground.

“What the fuck is that?” Gavin said, squinting so hard his nose scrunched up. Nine made the sign for “Rat” again as he giggled silently, but Gavin wasn’t paying attention. He had in fact noticed something else: an android walking on the beach house balcony, an army of pigeons hopping in his wake.

“Oh, shit,” Rupert backed away. “Uh. Didn’t mean to interrupt!—"

Nine looked at Gavin still on top of him and finally realized what he meant by ‘hard’. His hands flapped to explain so fast he whacked Gavin in the ear.

“Fuck!” Gavin shielded his face as he rolled away, “Am I that repellant? Why aren’t you at the prom, anyway?” he added this last part to Rupert, who froze.

“Oh,” Rupert laughed, all breathless for some reason. “I didn’t really have anyone to go with.”

“Oof,” Gavin muttered. “You know you can just ask her out! Seriously, this is difficult to watch.”

“Right. Like I’d ever listen to a human’s advice!”

“Come on, Nine, tell him!”

“Do you visit the beach house often?” Nine asked instead. Gavin sighed, but translated.

“Sure. It’s a great place to be alone. If you don’t get spooked easily.”

“…Spooked?”

“Well, the beach house is where all the old androids are taken away.”

Gavin glanced at Nine. “I thought there wasn’t a way out of here.”

“There isn’t. Not for androids that are alive, anyway. The broken ones get shut down and...”

Nine pointed to the pipe under the house, underground. Rupert misinterpreted.

“Didn’t take you for a believer in android hell,” he said. "But the androids that get too many demerits—they don’t come back, either. He tried to take Lucy, but… well, come up, I’ll show you.”

Nine peered at the barred sewer entrance again. Now that his visual sensors adjusted, he could make out the shape of a jacket half-buried in sand, black with white piping like his.

Was that a hand sticking out of the jacket sleeve?—

Gavin put a hand on Nine's shoulder. “Come on.”

Rupert opened the door of the beach house.  The three big windows were black as TV screens and Nine tried not to look at them. In the second room, Nine’s carnage of smashed televisions had been cleaned up and replaced by a brand new set of televisions flickering with the android keys to success. “REMEMBER, YOU ARE ALIVE!” bathed the empty armchair in red light.

“So what happened?” Gavin asked.

Rupert was cuddling a pigeon for support. “It’s not one of my favorite memories. Here.”

Rupert held out his hand. Nine picked at a fingernail, remembering how Ralph squeaked and squirmed at his interface. All androids did. No wonder they gave him a human translator. But when Gavin flicked at his fidgeting fingers he set his jaw and (carefully) touched Rupert’s wrist. The android just transferred a memory: Lucy sitting in the armchair, her cortex in pieces, LED flickering out. Just as it did, a trapdoor floor opened, and the chair flattened as if to tip her into the gaping hole in the floor. Rupert had burst in and whisked her away just in time.

Nine tugged his hand away as soon as possible, but Rupert didn’t look like he’d been hurt by the connection, for once. Maybe it only damaged androids when he transferred information.

“I better go,” Rupert said, slowly. He added, in a whisper. “If Kamski asks, I won’t say anything.”

Nine wasn’t sure Rupert’s protection was necessary, given the amount of cameras in Jericho. But they hadn’t been electrocuted yet, and Rupert’s sentiment was… appreciated. He marshaled his meager social programming and managed to raise his hand in a wave. Rupert actually seemed pleased by his mediocre farewell, and even waved back. He left in a swirl of pigeon feathers, and Nine relayed the details of Rupert’s memory.

“Think it’s automated?” Gavin poked the chair with his foot. “You put a dead android in the chair, the floor opens up?”

Nine shrugged. It couldn’t possibly make a difference, they didn’t have a dead android (and Nine liked Rupert at the moment).

“Well, only one way to find out.”

 Gavin spun toward Nine, hands outstretched. Nine immediately took evasive action, which was slightly more effective than previous attempts based on marginally more experience.

“Hey!” Gavin pulled his hands back in a posture of surrender. “What?”

Nine blinked. “I thought you were going to shut me down.”

“I was just gonna move you out of the way, sweetheart.” He edged around Nine and sat in the chair himself. “Look, if this system’s automated, they must have some mechanism for reading android electrical signals. A human doesn’t give off those signals. As far as sensors are concerned I might as well be a dead android.” He slowly lowered his hands. “Must have had some bad owners, huh?”

Nine was about to ask what he meant when the floor shuddered; he jumped away as a circle of linoleum slid back from the floor, revealing a dark chute. He grabbed onto Gavin and held him safely in place as the chair started to tilt.

“Well, that explains the body I saw in the sewer.” He pointed to the sides of the chute, where "IGNORANCE IS BLISS!" had been stamped over and over like a warning. "And that's fucking terrifying."

Nine’s hands were full and so could not provide appropriately emphatic agreement. Gavin squirmed until he had his feet planted against the sides of the chute.

“Okay, against everything horror movies have told me about going into dark scary tunnels, I'll go first.”

Nine freed one hand to finger spell, “Incinerator.”

“Nah, if anything it’s a shredder.”

Nine made a small static whimper.

“Come on! You act like I’ve never climbed into a creepy sewer before!”

Gavin wriggled until Nine reluctantly let him go, if only to tie off a rope to the armchair. Then they shimmied down into the chute together. Gavin swore a few times as he lost his grip, but Nine caught him easily with the handcuff (which for some reason led to more swearing--Gavin never behaved properly grateful). Soon they found themselves walking in a tunnel with Gavin’s flashlight leading the way. Nine must have gotten used to the cleanliness of Jericho because he noticed every piece of debris in the tunnel. A leg. Part of a torso. At least the handcuff gave him the excuse to walk closer to Gavin. Trickles of water lapped at their shoes. They were walking upward.

“They must use this sewer for both,” Gavin said, conversationally as they walked past an android head. "You know—the high tide pushing any android bodies up someplace, then water draining down out to the sea.” 

Nine looked over at Gavin’s scarred profile. "You said 'bad owners' earlier." 

"Yeah."

"...Why?"

"Uh, I dunno, because you freak out when anyone touches you? Kind of a red flag. You know other androids like that?" 

"...I don't know any androids." 

"You do, now. You didn't like doing your, uh, interface thing with him, either."

"I was not built to interface with androids." Nine watched the jittering beam of the flashlight. "Many of my owners took out their frustrations by attempting to damage me. And I've fought many people. I have no other experience with physical contact." Nine have him a sidelong glance. "No one has ever tried… what you have."

Gavin snorted. "What, pinning you against a wall?"

"That too, but I meant--"

He stopped as the beam of the flashlight fell away into darkness, revealing the edge of a pit. Nine saw light at the bottom though, so Gavin got another rope and they repelled down another chute. 

Nine’s feet crunched onto a pile of plastic as he hit the ground. He was standing on a mound of broken androids.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Gavin said. “That’s not creepy at all.”

They quickly climbed down off the pile of androids, to find themselves at the base of a massive wall. In the other direction, tall trees stretched out for as far as he could see.

“This must be the back side of Jericho,” Gavin said, then shook his arm. “Ha! HELL YES! We made it!”

“We need to find a settlement or means of transportation—” Nine found himself being tugged around by Gavin, “A locksmith—"

“What? Oh, yeah, sure. Soak up the victory for a second, though!” Gavin squeezed his shoulder. “Come on, if I don’t get real food and water soon I’m gonna keel over.”

They started off through the forest. It was quiet, and misty in the darkness. 

“Where do you think we are?” Gavin asked. “I mean, not that I put it past ‘em to stick this place in some haunted forest, you know? It’s giving me the creeps.”

“You have watched too many movies. Or you have low blood sugar.”

“Do you even know what that is?”

“…No. But humans get it and it makes them confused.”

“Just…I dunno. Something’s off, you know? Why dump a bunch of broken androids in the middle of a forest?” He glanced back at the massive wall. "And why did they build it like that? It's like they're trying to keep something out as much as in."

Nine didn’t know. He started to pick at his nail again.

“Stop it,” Gavin said, tugging on the handcuff to disrupt the slow erosion of his thumbnail. “You’re giving yourself a notch in your fingernail.’

Nine looked down and—so he was. Android nails didn’t grow back like human ones of course. He’d probably require a nail replacement someday.

“Why do you do that, anyway?” Gavin muttered.

Nine shook his head, still looking at his thumbnail. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, hearing about your horrible past usually makes me feel like a wimp, so that’ll keep me going. What happened?”

Nine spread his hands for a second before relenting. “I was tasked with eliminating an enemy of one of my owners,” he signed, trying to keep things as simple as possible. “I had been built with a kill module but I hadn’t used it to that point. When I engaged the program my stress level was too high, and my motor control activator failed.”

He paused to help Gavin over a fallen tree, which gave Gavin the opportunity to interrupt, of course. “You froze up.”

“Yes. My owner dealt with the situation himself, but he was unimpressed with my performance. He—he left… me there.” He was worrying at his fingernail again, and forced himself to stop as it got in the way of speaking. “The building was abandoned, so I remained there for three months and eighteen days. My hardware was not intended to run with a non-functioning motor control activator for that length of time. Now, when I experience stress levels between 70% and 95% I automatically calibrate my motor control activator. To make sure it works.”

“…Fucking hell!” was all Gavin said for some time. Nine wasn’t sure what he expected. Not that apparently. "How’d you get out of there?”

“Dr. Stern recovered me to serve another of her associates.”

Gavin made a grunt in the back of his throat. “I mean–are you okay?”

“I was not damaged,” Nine replied. “Aside from this new calibration requirement.”

Gavin just grunted again. “Yeah, sure, honey.”

…Nine considered the possibility that he had been damaged in a way he had not been able to repair. He worried at his nail again—at least, until Gavin pried his fingers apart and clasped his hand in his own.

“You wanna pick at something, pick at me,” he declared. Nine was not sure why. He would have liked to tell Gavin that no one else had held his hand like this, but that would require letting go.

“What happens after 95%?” Gavin eventually asked. “Will you freeze up again?”

Nine shrugged in a way that he hoped conveyed it was the most likely outcome. He attempted a smile and said, with one hand, “I am Nine.” In the context he hoped Gavin got the double meaning: I am okay.

Gavin snorted and said, “You’re a comedian is what you are,” in his small grumbly way that made Nine’s thirium pound in his ears.

They walked on. Nine tried to ignore the creeping feeling like he was in a movie set, though a very different genre than Jericho.

“Seriously,” Gavin said. “There’s something weird about this place. Did you see how many android parts were in that pile? And just parts. Maybe they use the sewers to get rid of old parts, but I didn’t see new parts for sale in Jericho anywhere, did you?”

Nine considered other possibilities. “Scavengers?”

“Then why are there no trails? It’s like…” He frowned down at the ground, which was covered in a layer of mulch, possibly wood chips. “Like—shouldn’t there be dead leaves? Bugs?”

Nine…wasn’t sure, honestly. It wasn’t like his programming took notice of that kind of thing.

“Oh, no,” Gavin whispered. He wasn’t looking at the ground anymore, but straight ahead.

It took Nine a second to see it through the trees. With the mist and the starlight it seemed like the trees were going to just go on forever. They walked forward a few yards though, and Nines reached out. His hand touched a smooth, hard surface. Painted concrete, to be precise.

“It’s a fuckin’ matte painting,” Gavin said. He kicked at the wall. “We’re still in the goddamn zoo!”

Nine pressed his hand into the wall but it was as solid as stone. The mist hid its height–it could be fifty feet tall for all he knew.

“I’m not gonna grip my hair and scream into the void,” Gavin said, mostly to himself. “This is not the Twilight Zone…Geez, I bet these aren't-- he picked at the bark of a nearby tree and, aure enough, revealed foam. "Why dump broken androids out here in a fake forest?” Gavin paused. “And who could be scavenging…”

A long low whine of metal made Nine spin around. There was a shape in the fog behind him. Several shapes, shambling in the mist. Some of them almost looked human at first, until Nine saw the numbers of arms and legs.

“Help us…” a voice creaked like an old door, “Please…need thirium…”

“Oh,” Gavin said, as if this solved everything. “Okay. Ignorance is bliss. I get it.”

An android sprinted past the rest, right at them. It would have been startling enough if the android wasn’t also missing half his head, and screaming, and waving a blade of sharpened plastic in his hand. Nine decided he could be afraid later, and stepped forward to take the brunt of the attack on his durable casing.

Gavin twisted out from behind him and slammed into the android before he could even graze Nine’s jacket.

The two went down and Nine found himself dragged after them, slamming into the hard ground next to them. The android blinked at him with one working eye. It was full of tears. Then the android jabbed his plastic knife at Gavin’s jacket. Gavin roared and punched the android in the head until its lights dimmed. Nine scrambled to his feet, hauling Gavin with him. A wash of dark blood stained the pink jacket, but Gavin ignored it in favor of grabbing Nine’s hand and tearing off into the mist. Nine didn’t need to be told to follow.

“So this is android hell,” Gavin wheezed as they ran, “I guess between the two—Jericho’s a little better!”

Nine didn’t waste time signing. The androids didn’t stop chasing them. When Gavin slowed, Nine picked him up and carried him. To his surprise, Gavin didn’t object (though if he did a dozen broken androids would tear them to pieces). Only by luck and Nine’s navigation programming did they manage to get back to the pile of androids and the entrance to Jericho. Nine had to hoist Gavin up the rope, thirium pump pounding, joints groaning. He dropped Gavin onto the floor of the tunnel, and pulled up the rope. The androids below creaked and roared and pleaded below them, but all Nine could hear was his own rushing ventilation system. 

It took him a second to realize that Gavin was laughing.

Nine stared at him, but the laugh spiraled out of control, almost maniacal, bouncing around the tunnel.

“Come on,” Gavin managed, wheezing, “Chased by mannequin monsters through a fake forest, that is… perfect nightmare–oh my fuck–!”

Nine shoved him, which just got him laughing again. Nine hoped he choked on it.

Chapter Text

Nine didn’t talk to Gavin the whole walk back through the tunnels. Not on the beach. Certainly not on the walk back to his house. He told himself he wasn’t sulking, just considering alternative approaches to this new problem. They needed weapons, to deal with the androids down there. And then maybe they could prop that fallen tree up, and climb over the painted wall?...

“I’m sorry I laughed, okay?” Gavin said. “Can we please wait til morning for the next scheme?”

Nine ignored him. Waiting until morning meant they’d miss their chance, the prom would have been for nothing (well, maybe not nothing). Certainly not fulfilling its original purpose, anyway.

“Let’s forget it until tomorrow,” Gavin said again. “Please.”

The first order of business would be checking Jerry’s store for weapons. Find something to use as a weapon. They needed to get back to the beach house before it was light, though. A break-in might be possible but they were on thin ice with the androids here already…

“Nine.”

Nine wheeled on him, to sign a full-blown lecture, probably. Gavin just stood there, his knees locked, face pale, and then he was more swaying than standing. Nine caught Gavin by the shoulder of his jacket.

“I’m good!” Gavin said, grabbing at his arm. “I’m good.” The spy didn’t have a ready quip, though, which was worrying. Nine finally ran some basic calculations of human needs based on the number of times he’d seen humans eat and drink and sleep and not bleed? The results were not good.

…well, if Nine was programmed for domestic tasks he might have performed better. But they were seated on the sofa, with some more stale birdseed from Rupert’s front porch and a glass of water from the fountain on the coffee table in front of them . Gavin had his hand pressed to the injury so he probably had that under control. The red spot on his jacket was a little bigger and wetter, so Nine got a towel and put it down to protect the upholstery. Then he settled in to wait until… Gavin recharged his batteries, or whatever humans did.

Gavin drank a little of the water but left behind the birdseed, and didn’t move. Nine wondered if he avoided food and drink in case it spilled out the hole in his side, like it had with the pigeon. What else could he provide, though?

He took a pillow from his side of the sofa (humans liked soft things, right?) and held it out to Gavin.

Gavin blinked at the pillow for a second before he took it. “Thought you were maybe gonna smother me again.”

Nine raised his hands, thought better of it, and lowered them again.

“What?”

Damn it. “…I am sorry I attacked you,” he signed, eventually. “And tried to kill you. Multiple times.”

Gavin just snorted.

“I will wait until you recover. Then we can try to escape again.”

“Well.” Gavin raised the pillow in a gesture of cheers. “Get comfortable.”

“To kill a human by stabbing, I aim under the ribcage to pierce the heart or lungs.”

“…Do they just load androids up with useless facts or do you pick them up as you go along?”

“It isn’t useless. The android did not strike you under the ribs,” Nine insisted.

“Oh, it’s a lot easier to kill a human than you think,” Gavin said.

Nine had not considered this possibility. He looked over Gavin again, hoping to see improvements in his situation. He only noticed a dark stripe on Gavin’s wrist, under the handcuff. He rubbed it to try to make them go away, and got a loud yell in response. Nine snatched his hand to his chest where he rubbed it in a circle of repeated apologies.

“It’s okay,” Gavin managed to laugh. “It’s a bruise. From all the pulling. You didn’t know?”

“My casing is durable,” Nine said. “But occasionally I have been damaged to the point of rupturing my thirium supply in some area. The thirium can be re-absorbed if it’s buffed out.”

“Yeah, well, human bodies don’t work like that. It just takes time.”

That sounded like weird magic to Nine but then again so did whatever process was occurring in Gavin’s side right now. “Will your side be repaired at the same time?” Nine asked (worriedly).

Gavin grinned slowly. “I don’t think so.”

“That is unacceptable.” Nine thought for a moment, wondering if they should fetch Ralph who at least seemed more domestic than him—but everyone was at the prom still. There were only so many assets at hand.

He said, with all confidence, “I’ll repair you.”

Gavin gave him a sidelong glance. “Oh, yeah?”

Nine nodded, sitting up straighter, acting a bit like he did with a new owner. Capable. Ready.

Gavin watched him carefully. “I’ll have to take my shirt off.”

“I am prepared to deal with that regrettable consequence.” He grinned early, before Gavin did, which was maybe the only reason why Gavin huffed a laugh.

“Alright. Fine.” He squirmed out of his jacket and shirt, leaving them to bunch up around the arm with the handcuff. Gavin’s chest was a landscape Nine did his best to prepare for. The muscles of his arms were another story, and by then it was too late and he was staring at pectoral muscles and belly button and other things he’d only ever caught in fleeting glances. Nines made a map of Gavin’s chest as detailed as his map of Jericho. Gavin’s proportions did not fulfill some golden ratio—his chest was a little too broad, the hair a little too thick. Nine still liked it.

“Feel free to look, honey,” Gavin said with a grin.

Nine turned away, deleting everything about Gavin’s chest from his memory tapes. He took a corner of the towel and started dabbing daintily at the blood.

Gavin caught his hand and the towel and pressed both against the wound. Gavin hissed but held his hand there. “Gotta—ngh—stop the bleeding. With pressure.”

The only pressure Nine was aware of was Gavin’s hand on his. The contrast of Gavin’s soft skin with the coarse hair on his belly was very intriguing. That proved a little harder to delete, at least until Gavin let go. The human then tore the shirt into shreds with his teeth and that was distracting all over again.

“Don’t give me that look.” Gavin winked. “It’s okay to want things.”

Nine shook his head hard. “What I want doesn’t matter.” He pressed his mouth into a line, then added, “That android that attacked you. He wanted thirium.”

“Yeah.” Gavin sighed. “I wondered why this place was so nice. A lot of the deviants that C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E.  picks up, they aren’t right in the head, you know? I guess being treated like a thing gets to you after a while. And any androids that are broken, too tough to fix…. It’s just like Eli to not have the stomach to put any of them out of their misery. Guess he thinks letting them out to plastic pasture is good enough.”

Nine wondered what it would be like to wake up in that empty hemmed-in forest, surrounded by broken androids, and signed, “Not fair.”

“Ha. Yeah. If I’d known that’s where they could end up….” He trailed off, as if he just realized something, but didn’t say more.

“You did not allow the android that attacked us to injure me.”

Gavin went back to shredding cloth, suddenly quiet.

“I could have withstood any damage that android might have sustained me. I was in the perfect position to protect you and you jumped in front of me. You are much more damaged, now.” Nine touched his forehead with two fingers out, then brought his hand down with his first and last fingers extended: sliding the signs for “Stupid,” and “Why?” together.

"Who cares? I'm not your guardian angel or something." Gavin was suddenly interested in his wound. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Nine shook his head at this (highly insufficient) answer. “I would not have been hurt.”

“You might not have been damaged but you can still get hurt. You’ve been through enough of people trying to hurt you.” This still made no sense, but before Nine could gain further clarification, Gavin grumbled, “I got some rubbing alcohol from the general store my bag--get it out for me.”

Nine obediently fetched it, though he had to take the little ukulele out of the bag to find it. He held the instrument with both hands as he watched Gavin wash the wound with water and wrap it in the makeshift bandages, pulling them tight. He took one glance at Nine and pulled the jacket back on when he finished. “Good as new,” he said, then nodded. “They never had a ukulele in Iron Butterfly, you know.”

Nine hurried to put the ukulele back in the bag, but Gavin swiped It from him before he could. “You ever play any music?”

…Nine had to shake his head again. Gavin tucked the instrument up against his chest like a small cat and strummed a chord, then another. The sound made Nine’s programming go quiet.

“Watch close, darlin’, I’ll only do this once.” Then Gavin started to play, and sing.

“’Tiptoe from the garden, by the garden of the willow tree, come tip-toe through the tulips with me!….’”

It was a pretty song, except that Gavin sung it in a trembling falsetto that was absurd and surreal and deeply creepy. It was music that made Nine think of the hauntingly strange surface of the moon. It was perfect. Nine leaned to get closer to the feeling and Gavin’s delicately moving fingers.

“My sister and I used to play together,” he said, continuing to strum. “Everyone likes music, right?” He glanced up at Nine through his eyelashes. “Guess you’d prefer to have Markus around to play for, huh? Tiptoe through the plastic tulips with him?”

Nine leaned back and shrugged.

“Come on.” Gavin strummed the last chord, then gave him a nudge. “Everyone loves someone.”

Nine felt his internal temperature rise. If only he could share his memories as easily as Rupert. He glanced at Gavin (still afraid Gavin’s interest was some trick) before signing. “I used to only experience loyalty for my owners.” He signed slowly to keep from bruising him further, and Gavin’s hand followed with his. It was almost like the dance they’d shared. It made him a little braver. “But, when my last owner ordered me to remove my voice simulator, the experience damaged other things in me. And other…feelings became manifest.”

“Feelings.” Gavin caught his hand, but lightly. His eyes were wide. “Holy shit. That’s when you went deviant.”

Nine was tempted to shrug again. He might as well not be deviant. It never did anything for him, except… hurt. Whatever ‘feelings’ he had for Markus were purely due to the fact that Markus was kind, and gentle, and talked to him (even if they never really talked). He touched the hole in his throat. Whatever feelings he had for Markus were, in fact, all to do with his owner. The man who Markus had been modeled after, and looked just as beautiful. The owner he, as far as he understood the definitions of both words, both loved and hated.

“What happened?” Gavin pressed.

And what a story it would have been: for an entire roll of ticker tape, a whole blackboard and a boxful of chalk. Not that he knew how to put into words the way his thirium pump squeezed when this owner told him he’d have his motor control activator removed and be controlled by remote for the rest of his existence. Nine didn’t know why he broke his command objectives to protest, except to perhaps explain the errors related to motor control he already had—and he was too frightened to say much. He had no last words worth remembering. He tore out his own throat out to prove his loyalty in spite of his deviancy, to illustrate betrayal of any kind was not an option if imprisonment in his own body was the consequence. Nine had no idea how to tell Gavin that ending up in Jericho was all-too fitting, or that all he had to show for deviancy was an obsession with an android that looked like his owner. Gavin would probably laugh and call it the most pathetic turn to deviancy in history. But he did ask, and Nine liked telling Gavin things. It couldn’t hurt Dr. Stern to share this.

Maybe, if he concentrated, if he tried to be gentle? He put his hand on Gavin’s arm, and initiated a connection.

He was just introducing the first volts before he remembered Gavin was human. The yell filled the whole house.

Nine snatched his hand back, rubbing “Sorry!” into his chest again. What the hell was wrong with him, interfacing with a human?—

“It’s,” Gavin let out a high-pitched laugh. “It’s fine! Didn’t need to know! None of my business! I’m sure it was rough!”

Nine sunk further into the cushions—at least, until Gavin pushed the ukulele into his hands.

“Here, take it. Uh. Happy birthday.”

Nine blinked down at the instrument in his hands. He didn’t have a birthday.

“Or—happy deviancy, I mean,” Gavin said. “Something good to remember it by, huh?”

Nine touched the blue enamel paint. He’d never been given anything before. Not something that was his. Not his owner’s, not Dr. Stern’s. His. He cradled it in his arms (afraid to make a sound on it).

“Well—say somethin’ huh? If you don’t want it…”

Nine shook his head. He set the ukulele carefully in his lap and signed, carefully, “I sometimes thought what it would be like to have an android of my own. My owner said he would give Markus to me.”

Gavin’s wide-eyed gaze crumpled a little. “You wanted—to own an android?”

Nine nodded. “I planned to leave him with a non-functioning motor control activator, and come back to him later. He’d take my memories and I’d take his, and he would understand me, then. He would love me.”

Gavin nodded. At least he didn’t seem surprised anymore. “You wanted to do to him what Dr. Stern did to you.”

“No.” Nine frowned. Gavin was clearly confused. “Dr. Stern didn’t leave me. She’s good to me.”

“Then how’d you end up with all those other dirtbag humans? Why are you here? It’s okay to change your mind!” He looked suddenly ill but he kept going. “I—I used to hate androids, you know!”

Nine cocked his head. Gavin just rubbed his mouth.

“That’s why I joined C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E., right? To put away every android on the planet if I could. Then there’s androids like you and…well I know it’s not right how some of you get treated but I can’t help thinking there’s more to you than—I mean, you’re a…” He stammered, clearly as uncertain about sharing things as Nine. “The point is, I…I changed my mind. You can, too.”

Nine imagined Gavin hating androids. Destroying them, even, all in a day’s work. Not hard to envision. At least Nine wasn’t the only one with a violent past. And why would he let himself get injured just to protect him, unless he really changed. Markus never protected him like that. His owner never did and neither did Dr. Stern.

No. Gavin was wrong about this. Dr. Stern cared about him. She liked him, and even if she left him here, she’d come back. She had to.

“Fuck,” Gavin said, suddenly angry—though the red tips of his ears indicated some embarrassment too. “Enough. I need a distraction.” He looked at the TV and grinned. “Wanna see what’s on?”

Nine pursed his lips, but got up to pull the TV closer to them so it was easier to change the channel. He waited for Gavin to turn the TV on.

“Hey, it’s your set,” Gavin said, gesturing. “Be my guest. Hey.” His smile spread across his whole face. “The TV. It matches your eyes.”

Nine scrunched his eyes shut.

“No—it’s gorgeous! I love it.”

Nine slowly opened his eyes to find Gavin’s smile hadn’t faded at all. Nine went perfectly still under it, caught as if his motor control activator failed but…not afraid, for once. Nine barely managed to break himself free, hiding how he picked at his nail. Thankfully Gavin didn’t notice, just showed him how to use the buttons and switches to turn the TV on (something he’d never been allowed to do). The screen flickered to life under his hand.

“Oh, no fucking way…”

Gavin’s eyes lit up as the screen spiraled with an eerie piano refrain, followed by a title card: The Twilight Zone.

“Is this okay?” Gavin asked, settling in with only a small wince. “This show’s great. Spooky. Just like this place!”

Nine wasn’t sure he wanted to watch a show about Jericho, but Gavin looked more alive than he had since the tunnel.

Gavin squeezed his knee, setting off a little bomb of warmth that mushroomed through his body. It didn’t hurt, not even a little. “I knew I liked you!”

This was a ridiculous statement. In his entire existence no one had ever told Nine they liked him. Not even Dr. Stern.

Which was ridiculous. Of course she liked him. If there was anything certain in his programming it was that indelible fact. 

Though he wondered, as Gavin whispered “Just hold onto me if you get scared,” maybe his definition of ‘like’ was changing.

Chapter Text

Nine watched the square of grayscale moving images. Killer dolls. Doppelgangers. Men stranded on the moon. It wasn’t at all like spying on Dr. Stern’s television over her shoulder, though Nine had to watch between his fingers more than once. Whenever he did, Gavin whispered things like, “Don’t worry, the doll doesn’t get him,” or “It’s okay, they get off the moon.” Only, sometimes he was completely wrong. Gavin was also in the habit of muttering, “Oh, shit,” right before a jump scare, or laughing when the characters shrieked in unspeakable horror. Gavin’s smiles grew brighter when Nine hid against his shoulder. He even squeezed Nine’s knee now and then, making everything spiral inside Nine like the show’s opening sequence. As warm and reactive a companion as the screen was cold and unfeeling. A massive distraction, really. Distracting an advanced android like Nine should not have been possible.

It was all so surreal and disturbing and wonderful.

An episode about abandoned toys made Nine think of the androids locked out of Jericho in the empty forest below. When he and Gavin escaped, he’d be sure to come back for them. The other androids in Jericho seemed happy enough with their captivity, but there had to be something better for the broken ones wandering lost and starving. Maybe Dr. Stern would take them in..

His preconstruction programs informed him this eventuality was highly unlikely. None of them, not even the ones in Jericho proper, performed the kind of tasks he handled. She’d… have no use for them. Nine might be able to withstand Dr. Stern’s demands of him, but the others required more gentle care. Ralph and his plastic flowers. Echo and Ripple and their always-joined hands. Rupert’s birds, and whatever soft, breakable thing he kept in his programming for Lucy. Something in his programming twisted uncomfortably.

He tried to focus on the next episode, which was about an android servant in a human home, meant to replace a dead mother. She saved a little girl and got hit by a car—Gavin winced and glanced at him—but she seemed to have a durable casing comparable to Nine’s own because she survived. The unpleasant twist inside of him eased as the little girl hugged her android tight.

The episode didn’t end there, though. The android, having watched her charges grow up, informed them her family had outgrown her and that she was leaving to serve someone else, or maybe no one at all. Nine watched, eyes wide, processors whirring.  The android on the screen smiled in her obsolescence. Everyone was smiling. Heat in Nine’s circuits told him to stand up and throw the TV out the window. His chest experienced an error, and it spasmed.

“You okay?” Gavin said beside him.

Nine turned away to hide the synthetic tears sliding down his cheeks. Ridiculous. It was only a story. He was only crying because no one loved the android enough to keep her. After everything she’d done.

Then suddenly he was crying about the things he’d done, and the all the things that had been done to him, and how through it all he’d loved his owners, every single one, and they couldn’t get rid of him fast enough.

“Nine?” He heard Gavin bite back a groan, and felt the couch cushions shift. His stress levels pitched upward as he tried to resolve the error in his chest. Nine wanted to run away to the Moon. “Nine, what’s wrong?”

“You’re right. Dr. Stern didn’t love me. Not Markus. No one.” His chest shuddered like a pipe full of rushing water as he broke his fists apart over and over. “I’m broken.”  Broken a hundred times. A thousand times.

“Hey. You’re not broken.” Gavin’s voice wasn’t like Markus’ perfect voice or Dr. Stern’s measured orders at all. It creaked like a creepy door from the show. Nine didn’t deserve such authenticity when he was couldn’t even delete a simple error.

Nine yanked down the collar of his shirt to reveal the gaping hole there. Gavin probably forgot how broken he was, and by his own hand. Now he knew.

But Gavin just slipped his hand in to cradle his neck. The human’s rough thumb brushed his cheek.

“That don’t mean shit, sweetheart. Body’s break, but you,” he gripped Nine’s neck, “You aren’t, alright? You’re a survivor.”

Nine blinked, his wet eyes haloing Gavin in a smear of glowing gray as the TV played on behind him. Gavin, who was safe now, and who saved him. Gavin, who didn’t need a disabled motor control activator to stay with him. Gavin couldn’t abandon him even if he tried.

Nine grabbed the rumpled lapel of Gavin’s jacket and kissed him. Gavin stiffened at first but Nine didn’t back down, and he did sink into the kiss after a second. Kissing Gavin wasn’t as good as kissing Markus, but Markus was made to be beautiful and perfect and Gavin was just born the way he was, like any other human. His lips were chapped. Stubble was growing on his cheeks and he clearly hadn’t brushed his teeth in a while. Surreal, disturbing, wonderful.

Nine pulled him closer for a gentler kiss. Gavin’s free hand had jumped from his neck like a startled pigeon, but now settled on his shoulder, squeezing, petting. Nine whimpered into the touch, saved the tingle in his body in high fidelity and in long-term archival behind his encryption where no one could take them away.

The kiss ended as Gavin gasped for breath. He was panting, maybe just from the wound in his side. “You don’t mess around.”

Nine was panting too, trembling. Suddenly quite aware of what he’d done. He pushed away. “You’re disgusting.”

“Oh, I’m disgusting.” Gavin opened his jacket again. Nine hurriedly pulled it shut, internal temperature skyrocketing. He went to delete the memory but this embarrassing interlude was now indelibly recorded in his memory tapes. He’d have to unlock his encryption to get rid of it.

He pressed his knuckles to his lips then finger spelled with one hand, eyes scrunched shut. “…So?”

“Not too bad.” Gavin said. “I’ll give you a nine out of ten.”

Nine opened his eyes. “Nine?” He grabbed Gavin’s jacket again and kissed him again, but Gavin’s laugh ruined it. He kissed again, and Gavin stopped laughing. He slid his tongue into Gavin’s mouth like he saw Markus do. Gavin made a noise that made his teeth vibrate.

Gavin tipped his chin down, and the kiss broke. “Hold up, buttercup.”

Buttercup. That was new. He pushed past Gavin’s hand and kissed him again.

“Nine, listen to me.”

Nine pulled back, just enough to sign, “Yes, Gavin,” slowly, full of affection, though the letters trailed off towards the end. Nine out of ten was good, wasn’t it? Gavin wasn’t just teasing him.

“You, uh… we shouldn’t.” Gavin looked away, color that had been draining from his face all night barely tinging his cheeks again. “I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Nine glanced at the TV, then him. “Because—”

“You’re not broken,” Gavin said, “And hell, I know you’re a person, alright, it’s just... you aren’t your own person yet. You see what I mean?”

“I am.” Nine felt his nostrils flare. “I am not under remote control! These are my words. I stayed in my own room in Las Vegas, I planned my whole mission in Tokyo—” this was straying into territory he shouldn’t. Data he knew he shouldn’t share. Gavin stopped him before he could go on by catching his fingertips, so lightly Nine could have easily pulled away. He—just didn’t want to.

“Yeah, and who was there to punish you if you had an idea they didn’t like, huh?” Gavin laughed again, this time breathless. “I mean—goddamn—there’s a lot of other people out there! Humans and androids and…” he had to catch his breath, “You can’t keep falling in love with every asshole that comes your way!”

Nine shook his head. Gavin wasn’t an asshole.  Of course he wasn’t. Gavin cared about him, laughed at his attempts at humor, sang to him, tried to help C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E., and Rupert, and him. That meant he wanted him. He tugged his hands free and signed firmly, “When we escape I will learn how to take care of you. I won’t go back to Dr. Stern. I’ll be your android.”

Gavin smiled faintly. He’d gone pale again. “You can’t love someone you own. Wouldn’t be much better than Dr. Stern if I did.”

Something went click. Nine looked down to see his fingernail had entirely popped off from picking at it. Exposed circuits in his fingertip winked at him underneath. His stress levels soared over 70%. He tried to shakily press it back on, tears welling up again.

“No, hey…” Gavin put his hand over Nine’s as the nail fumbled from his hand. “This is good. Gotta go live life, you know? Fuck up. Break down. Get back up. You’ll do just fine without me.” His voice was almost a whisper.

Nine hissed, baring his teeth. He should strike Gavin across the face. That would let him know he was serious. He couldn’t hurt Gavin now, though. He…shouldn’t. He didn’t miss his combat protocols anymore, not really. “I want you!” he said instead. “You said I should want things. I want you, Rat!”

Gavin hardly reacted. His eyes were fluttering. “Yeah, well, I… don’t think I was ever supposed to get out of this one.”

“What do you mean?” Nine looked at the wound. “Why haven’t you finished your repairs?”

Gavin didn’t respond. His wrist dangled heavily from the handcuff, and his eyes had shut. He probably didn’t see. Nine shook him a little. He took the water from the coffee table and poured it on his face. He’d deal with Gavin’s anger when he woke up.

Gavin’s eyes didn’t open.

The house was silent and empty all around him. Why hadn’t the floor electrocuted him yet? This was his all his fault, wasn’t it? Surely one of the cameras saw this, and someone would come to Gavin’s rescue like before. He stomped a foot on the floor, but nothing happened.

He started to pick Gavin up but that just made another big clot of blood ooze into the pink jacket. He pressed his hand to it like Gavin showed. Gavin gave a rattling, wet sigh, but still didn’t stir, and no one came.

Nine grabbed the phone, cracking it against the table a couple of times, then shouting static into it.

Chloe’s soft, sweet voice filtered through. “How may I direct your call?”

Nine tried to make the words. Gavin. Help. Please. Nothing came out but a harsh hiss.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. How may I direct your call?”

Nine banged the phone on the coffee table again: three short, three long, three short.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. How may I direct your call?”

Nine tore at his hair and screamed into the phone.

“Nine?”

The front door opened, letting in the first light of dawn, and a cool breeze, and Rupert. Nine’s vision was going fuzzy but he wasn’t sure if it was from tears or errors or the cloud of pigeons as Rupert rushed inside.  

“Oh. He’s...” Rupert winced. “Should humans be leaking like that?”

Nine grabbed Rupert’s hand and pulled it to the wound on Gavin’s side.

“Sorry,” Rupert said, frowning, “I worked on a farm, I don’t know how humans work.”

Nine bared his teeth again, almost reaching over to rip Rupert’s throat out for not knowing, not doing. He didn’t want to hurt, he wanted to fix. He felt tears welling up again but he couldn’t cry. His stress levels continued to climb.

He pushed the phone toward Rupert, his hands shaking. His motor control activator was flooding with errors.

Rupert held up the receiver. “Hello? Um. Nine needs help…”

Silence on the other end of the line, then in a tinny voice, “Nine knows what he needs to do, Rupert.”

Rupert turned to look at Nine. The pigeons perched around the room looked at him, too. Nine squinted back at them, snarling, just trying not to cry. Of course C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. wouldn’t help! Not even with Gavin broken and him begging. He wasn’t sharing highly-classified information, so…

So…

Nine’s stress level jumped right up to ninety-nine percent and held steady. He pressed a hand to his chest, and the data tapes stored there.

“Hey, you’re hurting yourself,” Rupert said, pointing to the thirium leaking out from his fingertip where he was digging down into the circuits in stress. Nine ignored it, though, just slowly held out his free hand to the other android. It shook a little. He ignored that too.

Rupert glanced down at it. “I heard you’re not so good at interfacing.”

Nine bit his lips and nodded. He swept his hand over his chest, open-palmed. “Please.” He held out his hand again.

Rupert glanced at Gavin. “What have humans ever done for us? If your secrets are that important to you… maybe he’s not worth it.”

Nine blinked, then pointed between them, at all their human-made parts.

“Oh. Right. I see your point.” Rupert, with a small nod, let Nine take his forearm.

It wasn’t like his usual attempts to communicate through interface. He didn’t try to send any directives into Rupert’s programming. He just reached into his encrypted data files and unlocked them. Las Vegas, Moscow, Tokyo. All his owners with all their schemes and crimes. All the classified things he’d ever seen and heard and did. Dr. Stern and her laboratory, her television and the man on the moon. All of Markus. And all of Gavin, of course. It all fell open under Rupert’s touch in dots of data just as Nine’s stress levels reached full capacity. His motor control activator seized, and he froze in place.

He didn’t try to look as Rupert picked up the phone again, hardly heard the words that he spoke into it. Chloe’s voice informed him they were on their way, and to please hold. Rupert didn’t let go of his hand as singing played through the speaker while they waited, sad and slow: How can there be any sin in sincere? Where is the good in goodbye?

Shadows moved across the carpet. Nine couldn’t turn to see who they were. Rupert pulled away, leaving Nines arm floating there in empty air like the space man. A pigeon that had perched on his shoulder flew away. He just had Gavin’s weight beside him now, out of his field of vision.

A shadow fell over him.

“That worked much better than I thought,” Elijah Kamski said. He sat on the sofa where Rupert had been and smiled at him. “Looks like you’ve had quite the adventure.” He picked up the ukulele and examined it. “Learned a few things?”

Nine gave a small bleat of static. He realized he’d frozen with his hand tight around Gavin’s only when he felt someone carefully prying his fingers loose. The ticker tape machine in his forearm whirred on empty, then went quiet. Gavin wasn’t his to hold onto. You couldn’t love someone you owned.

He wondered if Kamski could read lips, though. "Help him."

“Oh, don’t worry about him,” Kamski said. He set the ukulele aside and looked Nine over. “May I?”

Tell me what can be fair in farewell, dear, the phone crooned.

Nine closed his eyes, and stopped struggling against his frozen chassis. Dr. Stern wouldn’t understand but for once that didn’t matter. As long as someone looked after Gavin better than he had, that would be enough.

He felt Kamski push up the hem of his turtleneck and pop his memory tape out of his chest. Nine felt his memory tapes click as they stopped recording, then opened his eyes and watched the man sitting in front of him hold the tape up to the light. Nine couldn’t remember his name, now.  

“All this, years of top-secret intel… for one cut-rate spy?”

Nine blinked. He didn’t know who the man was talking about. The last of his memories still running through his circuits were disappearing into a growing fog. The echo of an error inside of him. The warmth of a familiar weight nearby that he couldn’t turn to see. He frowned at his outstretched hand. How did that get there? Why couldn’t he move?

The man clucked softly. “Oh, the RK900 is a neurotic model, isn't it.” He smiled. “Thank you for your cooperation. Enjoy your retirement and… try to relax, alright? Be seeing you.”

A fingertip pressed against his temple, and everything, first the TV, then the sofa, then the warm weight pressed against him, faded away to black.

Chapter Text

Nine did not expect to wake up. He felt empty. It took him a second to realize it was not because his data tapes were missing. Someone put them back in his chest, though he could tell they’d been played over several times, probably copied. Now the tape felt loose inside of him, in need of tightening with a pencil or maybe just his little finger. Maintenance for another day. He should be grateful C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. returned them at all. That wasn’t why he felt empty.

He rolled over on his bed in Jericho, looking for Gavin asleep beside him, but knowing he wasn’t there. His wrist was free of any handcuff. The space beside him was empty. He smoothed his hand across the blanket to feel for the depression Gavin’s body had left, but it had faded long ago. He lay there a while, watching sunlight slide across his hand, the blanket, the wall. Maybe he’d never move again, by choice instead of by force. Become an unfeeling part of the furniture.

He wasn’t picking at his fingernail, though.

He got up and walked through the house. It was empty, but the late morning light filled it with strange sad warmth. The radios were back in place, the Jerrys sighing bah-da, bah-da-da-da. The blood stains on the sofa were gone. In fact, there were no signs Gavin had ever been there. Perhaps it was all just inserted into his memory tapes and none of it really happened.

He had little reason to escape, at least. There wasn’t any point in returning to Dr. Stern now. He didn’t have to leave at all, he could just… sit here and watch television and replay his memories over and over in his head. Markus’ smiles. Gavin’s jokes.

He touched his wrist and thought: live life, fuck up, break down, get back up.

He opened the front door. Jericho looked pristine and perfect as always. Ralph was making flower crowns on his front porch, and the little android waved at him. Nine managed a small wave back, then promptly fled back into his house to recover.

Live life, fuck up, break down, get back up.

He found flowers in the kitchen and, with only a small pep talk to himself, emerged again and brought them to Ralph’s front porch. Ralph literally squeaked with excitement, and they watched the sunlight move across Ralph’s plastic lawn together while they wove the silk flowers into shapes.

“Ralph is glad you’re back. Ralph was wondering if you would be gone forever!”

Nine pressed his mouth closed and shrugged. Maybe he did belong with the other wild androids outside of Jericho. But—well, he’d make the most of his time here. He held up what he’d created: A half-mask of flowers, with ribbon to tie it on. He tried a smile as he offered it to Ralph, pointing at the ragged scars on his face.

“Oh! This is… for Ralph?” Ralph took the pretty mask, tears welling up in his android eyes. Then Nine startled as Ralph enveloped him in a in a hug so tight his chassis popped. “Oh! Thank you!” Ralph then tied it on, with the mask perched on top of his head like a hat. Nine pointed to Ralph's face again but Ralph ignored him.

“So fetching!” He told his reflection as he admired himself in the chrome of his bicycle. “It is the best gift!”

…Nine gave a small sigh and gave up, smiling in spite of himself.  

“Nine and Ralph will do flower arranging every afternoon,” Ralph promised. “Ralph has been getting lots more flowers in the mail! We can decorate your whole house in white orchids.”

Nine preconstructed what that might look like, oddly intrigued by the prospect, before his processors caught up with everything Ralph said. The mail? Where did Ralph get mail from?

He glanced back toward his own house to find the flag on his mailbox was up. Nine bowed to Ralph, then cautiously approached it and pressed the flag down. As he did so the door opened on a spring. There was a brown envelope inside.

After reasoning with himself that it was probably not a bomb, Nine took it inside his house. He shook it out on the coffee table and found small vinyl record inside, its cover a haze of swirling shapes spelling ‘Jimi Hendrix’. It took Nine a few moments to find his record player, several more to figure out how it worked. But he pressed play and the record spun, the needle skated around the record’s surface and the singing on the radios cross-faded away into electric guitar. He stood transfixed by the guitar slamming into his chest like a human heartbeat, so he almost didn’t notice the note that had fallen out onto the carpet.

“Hey sweet-face. Just a little something to thank you for -------------------------------- I’ll get you a full album when I figure out how much the postage will be. I’m sorry ---------------------------------------------------------- Don’t work too hard and write back soon, -----------.”

The rest of the note had been redacted, even the signature. But Nine recognized the big loopy handwriting, though, each letter an echo of the chalk buildings Gavin showed him how to draw. He held the note to his chest, closed his eyes, and listened to the music. When it finished he dashed out of his house again, dashing down the stairs under a sunset like the record’s tie-dyed cover.

He almost ran into Rupert as he burst into the courtyard.

“Nine! I thought you were gone—” Rupert said, then yelped as Nine picked him up and spun him around. “Hey—what?” Rupert’s mouth fell open. “Are you…smiling?”

Nine touched his face and yes, there was indeed a broad grin was currently pressed into his cheeks. He kept grinning as he let off a string of signs too fast for anyone to follow—in his haste he forgot his chalkboard.

“Ha! Sounds like you had a good day,” Rupert said anyway. “Maybe sometime you can teach me ASL.”

Nine blinked at Rupert.

“Hey, I taught myself how to speak to pigeons—how hard could it be?”

Nine swallowed something tight and heavy in his non-existent throat, and nodded.

“It’s good to see you again, Nine.”

Nine startled at the new voice, and turned to see Lucy walking by. She smiled at Rupert, but he just hid behind his pigeons and she continued on her way. Nine frowned at Rupert.

“Your social interaction programming is holding you back,” he signed. “Clearly and concisely express your feelings to Lucy. She will be impressed by your forthright attitude.”

Rupert cuddled a pigeon for moral support. “Sorry?”

Nine sighed, but he supposed Rupert deserved a little help. He took the pigeon from Rupert’s hands, then went over to Lucy and gave it to her. Lucy startled as Rupert rushed over, apologizing profusely, but their hands touched as Lucy handed over the pigeon and that seemed to freeze the pair in place. Nine flashed Lucy a quick ‘okay?’ sign behind Rupert’s back, and she smiled and nodded. Nine watched them wander off together in a cloud of pigeons like the cherubs of Cupid, and smiled to himself.

In the general store, Nine didn’t wait for the Jerrys to finish the song they were singing. He just put his record on and turned the volume all the way up. The Jerrys were thankfully very forgiving, and listened.

“Groovy!” one the Jerrys said.

“What a beat!” another said.

“Sure, we could try it,” a third said, “But none of us knows how to play a guitar,” He gestured to a large guitar on the wall. It was unlike any guitar Nine had ever seen, all white enamel and alien curves.

Nine’s hands flapped in his excitement to point at himself.

“You want us to just give you the most expensive thing in our store?” one of the Jerrys laughed.

Nine felt heat flood his system.

“We’re just saying you’ll need to do a lot of work around here to earn that.” Jerry eyed the record. “…Or at least let us borrow a few more records…?”

That, at least, Nine was able to do. He got a record in the mail once a week, each time with a redacted note. Between crafting dates with Ralph, ASL lessons with Rupert, jam sessions with the Jerrys, golf cart races with Echo and Ripple, and modeling with Lucy, he didn't have time to mourn the missing messages. He re-read each legible word under starlight, or on the beach, or in the shade of a plastic tree. He sent replies with no address, not sure what would be redacted or where they would go. He learned not to question the mail. There was too much other work to do.

*

-THREE MONTHS LATER-

“Are you sure about this?” Rupert stood with Nine on Jericho’s beach, his pigeons a tight knot of visualized anxiety around him.

Nine did not feel worry merited a response, so he signed instead, “Do you have the thirium?”

Rupert nodded reluctantly. “What if it’s not enough?”

Nine shrugged. “Too late now.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and let out a burst of static.

“Ready!” Echo and Ripple waved from the golf cart, which was tied to one of the bars across the sewer entrance. The dozens of other androids gathered on the beach, each holding their own ropes tied to the bars, shouted in response. Nine picked up his own knot in the rope, then raised his hand. As one, the androids pulled, the golf cart revved its engine. The bars creaked like a haunted door, then popped out, sending androids flying back into the sand.

Nine was on his feet in a second, helping androids up and staring into the dark sewer entrance.

A few moments later, a few shambling figures lurched out of the sewer. Nine recognized the one missing half his head standing toward the front, but there were others. A lot of others.   

Rupert quickly pushed forward the crate of thirium bottles, though he was shaking so much the bottles rattled against each other. Nine went to help him, and pulled him back sharply as the androids tore the crate apart to the sound of breaking glass. It seemed to satisfy them though, and they blinked around as if waking from a dream: first at the androids, then the wide, empty ocean. They looked much less frightening out here on the sand.

Nine took a cautious step forward and held up his chalkboard:

‘YOU ARE ALIVE.

EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS A HUMAN CONSTRUCTION.

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS.’

Chapter Text

Nine opened his eyes, stared up at an unfamiliar ceiling, and was not surprised in the slightest. Honestly he wondered when this was coming. Electricity hadn’t shot up from the floor of Jericho in a while (of course Rupert and his pigeons shut down the grid weeks ago) but he figured it was only a matter of time before C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. pulled some sort of retaliation. He fully expected slow disassembly at the hands of engineers and other scientists. The damage had already been done, of course. He smiled at that that thought. This sense of morbid accomplishment, he decided, was what being human felt like.

…But it wasn’t the ceiling of some workshop or laboratory looking down at him. He sat up, and no straps or disabled motor control activator prevented him from doing so. He was in a room with a bed and a kitchenette and an open doorway leading to a bathroom. It was perfectly silent. A radio sat on a bedside table, and he clicked it on. A car commercial blared out and he switched it off again.

The taps in the bathroom worked. A couple of stains on the carpet and hairs behind the mattress suggested, yes, this was an average hotel room. His chalkboard, his ukulele, the records and letters and the white electric guitar, were all packed up neatly by the door as if brought up by a bellhop.

All this only suggested authenticity, of course. C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. really outdid themselves this time.

The bedside table also held a travel voucher for an airline, in excess of—well, more than enough to fly anywhere in the world. He slipped it into his jacket, only to discover he was just wearing a t-shirt and shorts. He searched the room and found a suitcase of clothes. Nice clothes, and smart boots, too. Nine got dressed in a white suit with a high collar, found a pair of sunglasses, and grabbed his belongings before he made his first attempt to leave.

The door opened under his hand, leading into a long hallway of doors. Just the sort of puzzle C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. liked. Good thing he brought everything with him. He stepped cautiously down the hall, watching closely to see if an optical illusion was at work, or some attacker would leap out—

A door swung open beside him, and he raised the suitcase. A child stepped out of the door and looked up at him. She was wearing a felt hat with two large black discs affixed to the top. She didn’t look like any android model he’d seen. She frowned, then dashed down the hall to a stairway, which turned out to be perfectly ordinary. He followed her.

A large lobby full of people awaited him at the bottom of the stairs. Human people, as far as he could tell. They didn’t pay him any attention. He stepped out of the lobby and there was a crowded parking lot, palm trees, cool breeze, other hotels, streets, cars. A big sign proclaimed ‘The Happiest Place On Earth’ was just a tram-ride away. C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. really did spare no expense.

Nine felt the world stretching out around him and immediately dashed back inside.

That’s when he saw the familiar figure in an inadvisable plaid sport jacket, sitting in one of the lobby chairs and picking at a bouquet of flowers. He was watching the elevator but Nine had taken the stairs.

Nine snapped his fingers, as a test. A few people glanced over but only one man jumped to his feet. It was surreal, and not just because Nine never saw Gavin Reed from such distance before. He had his hair slicked down to go with the jacket, and stalks of white orchids in green tissue paper that gave his skin a sickly tinge. He looked absolutely appalling.

Nine in all his years of recorded memory had never seen a prettier sight.

“H-heya, honey,” Gavin said.

Nine slowly took off his sunglasses, then swept his hand across his nose. “Rat.”

Gavin laughed for one bright, brilliant moment, and with it the strange hair and clothes faded, the lobby fell away and they were standing outside the discotheque in Jericho again. It was a good thing Nine didn’t need breath to speak because his ventilation system was shorting out. Not that he knew what to say. Where to begin.

“Uh.” Gavin held out the flowers. “Guess the squeaky wheel gets the grease, huh? No wonder they wanted to get rid of you.”

“What?” It took Nine a second to even accept the flowers. Tissue paper crinkled in his careful grip.

“Oh, come on,” Gavin laughed. “Jericho’s Declaration of Independence got printed from here to Tokyo. Talk about the mouse that roared, huh?”

“But Jericho did not gain its independence.” Nine fiddled with a flower petal. “C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. sent soldiers to quell any uprising. We did not resist.”

“They sent a fucking army just to just to abuse some poor helpless androids. Do you know how many plastic hippie communes popped up once word got out? And all those broken androids you rescued that C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. just abandoned… they’re gonna be digging themselves out of PR hell for years. Everyone’s looking at androids a little differently now.”

Nine shrugged, maybe a little coy.

“Yeah, like that wasn’t your plan all along.” Gavin failed to suppress a grin. “Smart ass.”

 Nine stood up straight, warmth swelling in his chest and stinging his eyes. “Your attempts to flatter me will not make me more compliant,” he said. He tugged at one of the fragile blossoms in his hands, then gestured at the elaborate but clearly false set-up around them. “What does C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. want this time?”

Gavin blinked at him a couple of times. “…Oh, this is the real deal, toots. Anaheim, California.”

“Surely Mr. Kamski put you up to this, again. Am I to get him out of PR hell?”

“Ha! You think I still work for that asshole after what he put you through? Didn’t—” Gavin put his hands on his hips, looked around then squinted at Nine. “He redacted my letters, didn’t he?”

Nine nodded, and couldn’t help but giggle as Gavin growled.

“Bastard!—” A mother with a few children glared at him as he walked past and he raised his hands in apology. “Sorry! Look, it doesn’t matter now. You’re out, I’m out, and C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. can suck… a lemon!”

Nine just rolled his eyes. “Yes, I’m sure they just let me go with my data tapes intact, ready to return to Dr. Stern.”

“Trust me, you don’t have to worry about her.” Nine frowned and now it was Gavin’s turn to roll his eyes. “Long story short, she’s not in the picture anymore. Guess you’re the one to thank for that, it was your intel that got her.” Gavin stepped a little closer. “You’re over her, right?”

Nine nodded, distractedly—that wasn’t why he was…. He looked around. “Then—who owns me?” 

“I hate to tell you this, darlin’, but you do.”

Nine shook his head, still looking around for whoever was going to step out and freeze his motor control activator, or begin to speak to him from a television screen. No one did, at least not yet. And he was certainly not in Jericho anymore. His chest tightened thinking of the androids he left behind. But, strangely, as his preconstructions of Rupert and Ralph and the others taking care of things without him played out, the results were generally positive. They’d hate it in a simulation with actual humans like the one Nine now found himself in. They liked Jericho. And if Gavin Reed managed to send letters, surely he could do the same.

He turned back to the eyesore that was Gavin and signed, “It is…good to see you, again.” Maybe Gavin was his owner now. C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E.’s idea of punishment.

If it was, they failed spectacularly.

“Y-yeah.” Gavin scratched the back of his neck, causing the fabric of the awful jacket to stretch around his big human muscles, and revealing a sweat patch in his armpit. For some reason that was what put Nine over the edge. He dropped the flowers in favor of scooping Gavin into his arms in mad dash, like the ocean embracing the shore, or the final note of a dance.

“Hey—!” Gavin struggled against his (far superior) android muscles. “Not in front of my sister!”

Sister? Nine set him down (oh so gently) just as a woman, who had been sitting in the chair next to Gavin, stood up. She was giggling.

“Uh—yeah. Sorry.” Gavin’s face had became even more frowny, probably to hide his blush. “That’s, uh—that’s my sister.”

He signed it as he spoke, and the woman signed, “Hi, I’m Susan,” before grabbing Nine’s hand to shake. She had Gavin’s eyes, set in a rounder face. “You should know that The Doors are better than Iron Butterfly. Much more thoughtful lyrics!”

Nine almost experienced a motor control activator failure. He turned to Gavin, who looked sick but maybe not in a bad way, and the conversation switched entirely to ASL.

“I…sort of told her all about you,” Gavin signed.

“He has not,” she replied, glaring at him. “But I plan to interrogate you over ice cream.”

“Susie, come on…”

“Oh, so it’s fine for you to hold my boyfriends over the coals, and you want him to tag along at school with me before I even get to know him?”

“Tag along?” Nine asked.

Susan gasped. “You didn’t tell him?”

“H-he just got here!” Gavin stumbled over his signs as he turned even redder. “And you interrupted—”

“You’re so slow!” she signed entirely over him. “I’ll get in line for tickets. Hurry up, okay?”

She gave Nine a glance-over, smiled, and skipped off. Gavin took the opportunity to unbutton his collar.

“Man, is she stressful!”

“So just like you, then?” Nine laughed.

“Whatever, you’re easily stressed out.” He took a brochure from his jacket and held it out. “Here.”

Nine took the brochure, which had the seal of a university in Washington D.C. printed across the front.

“They’re not letting androids go to college yet,” Gavin said, then gulped. “But they let in androids as assistants, and I thought, since Susie's starting—you know, you haven’t gotten to learn much about the world and I figure too much TV’ll rot your circuits. Susie’s a total pain, but she’s alright. First semester gets going in two weeks, if you wanna…” Gavin scratched the back of his neck. “I know it sucks, but if you gotta have a human around to sign leases and shit, you could do worse than her.”

Nine felt himself smiling as he crinkled the paper, and said, again, “Like you?”

“…Yeah,” Gavin relented. “Like me.” He laughed somewhere higher in his chest than usual. “It’s no strings attached. Cover up the light on your head and go become a film projectionist if you want. Work on a farm in Kansas. Whatever you want.”

Nine scanned the brochure, paths and preconstructions spreading out in front of him like the pretty neighborhoods of Jericho. As far as films went, this was not how horror was expected to end. There had to be a catch, somewhere. A final twist to drive Nine mad. The man in The Twilight Zone with all the time in the world to read, and broken glasses.

“I run a bar near the Smithsonian,” Gavin blurted out. “Used to be a firehouse. I live in the apartment upstairs. C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. had a pretty good severance package! Uh. You just take the subway from the college. Plenty of room.” He said this while looking meaningfully at Nine’s shoes (Nine resisted the urge to kneel just to make eye contact).

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh God--You gonna make me spell it out, huh?” Gavin signed hard and sharp. “The flowers and suit and pomade not clear enough?”

Nine blinked at him.

“Oh, you asshole—” But Gavin stepped forward, slid his arm around Nine’s waist, and kissed him. Good thing Gavin held onto him because otherwise he’d have floated into the sky, gravity gone, an android on the moon. Parents in the lobby gasped and children laughed. Their lips parted and the actually-pretty-good-spy said, breathily, “You owe me a song on your guitar for that.”

Nine pressed quick kisses on Gavin’s cheeks until the man pulled away, giggling like a schoolboy. Any second now Kamski and Chloe and the rest of C.Y.B.E.R.L.I.F.E. would jump out, or the stage light masquerading as the sun would fall to the ground.

Any second.

“Well—hey, if you’re not itching to jump on a plane right this minute, you wanna check out some of the rides? There’s games, too.” He pointed outside at The Happiest Place On Earth.

“What’s the catch, Gavin?” Nine said. He took the time to spell his name.

“No catch, Nine, really! Uh.” He winced. “My real name isn’t Gavin, though.”

Ah, here it was, the big reveal. Nine braced himself for Gavin to pull at his face revealing it was a mask all along. “…It isn't?”

“Yeah. That was a code name. Like James Bond, I guess. My name's really, uh,” Gavin reached for his neck, but he only flipped up the collar of his jacket as if to hide behind it. “...My name is Clarence.”

...Nine considered this bombshell. Then he frowned at the ceiling as he finger-spelled it. 

“That’s—!” Clarence pushed his hands down before he could finish, “Listen, you just keep calling me Rat, alright? Come on, let’s go win a kewpie doll or something—but, uh, to be honest,” he gave a big wink, “I already got the best one right here.”

Clarence (Clarence? Really?) held out his hand, the one Nine had been handcuffed to for a few frustrating, wonderful days. Nine started to take it, then remembered how difficult it was to sign with right hand encumbered, and took his other hand instead.

-THE END-