“Where are we going?” I asked the driver.

No answer.

“State destination and authorisation,” I demanded.

The android finally replied, “Destination Rocklea Drive, Port Melbourne. Authorisation code SK1.”

“Rocklea Drive?” I mumbled, fear started to creep along my veins. I knew that address…

Shaun took my hand. “SATinc,” he said flatly. “Authorisation by Sasha Kingsley.”

How on earth had he overridden my driver’s sequencing? God, I didn’t want to know… I started to feel sick. We were being kidnapped. They knew. They knew Shaun was the prototype, and they were going to take him. And God only knew what they were going to do with me, but it was what they were going to do to Shaun that frightened me the most.

“Jae’s message was a warning,” Shaun said quietly. “He said they knew and they were coming. His friend in Singapore ran remote tracers and found SATinc were watching his internet activity because he was connected to you.”

My God, was Jae okay?

“Your heart rate is elevated,” Shaun said with a frown.

“I’m scared.” I looked right into his eyes and squeezed his hand. “Whatever happens, I will always love you, okay?”

Shaun smiled but there was sadness in his eyes. “And I love you. Don’t be sad, Lloyd. This isn’t the end. Remember in Moby Dick, Ishmael thought the final scene with the whale was the end. But in truth, it was his beginning. He lived to see another day, to take what he’d learned about himself and become who he was meant to be.”

I shook my head. What was he talking about? How could he be thinking about Moby Dick at a time like this? “Aren’t you scared?”

“Only for you.” He leaned and kissed me. “Don’t fight them. You must comply.”

I shook my head and blinked back tears. “They’re going to take you! They’re going to take away the part of you that makes you you.”

He smiled and put his hand to my face and kissed me again. “Be brave, and know that I love you, Lloyd.”

The car drove around the back of the SATinc offices, into an underground car park, and everything was cast in dark and shadows. Shaun’s hand tightened around mine and I knew he felt fear. If he could feel love and joy, then he could most certainly feel fear. He was trying to be brave.

The car slowed near a set of doors where four tall, looming figures stood. “Shaun, whatever happens,” I whispered. “Don’t you fight them either. Don’t resist or struggle. I don’t want them to hurt you.”

Shaun smiled at me, his face half hidden in darkness, half illuminated by the fluorescent lights outside the car. “We’ll be fine, Lloyd. Remember Moby Dick.”

The car doors opened and men in black stood, waiting for us to get out. They looked like military. Jesus.

I slid out of the car, my legs like jelly, trying not to look at the guy in black fatigues with a buzz cut. Shaun got out behind me, I could feel him press against me. I was shielding him from them—whoever they were. The military man next to us started to close the car door and we had no choice but to move forward. Then Sasha Kingsley walked out the tinted doors. “Ah, Mr Salter. So good of you to join us.”

“I didn’t exactly have a choice,” I said, my voice sounding stronger than I thought it would.

Sasha smiled at me. It wasn’t a pleasant smile; his charming salesman routine I met on the first day was nowhere to be seen. “Yes, well, we tried conventional ways but you went off grid.” Then he looked at Shaun. “Shaun. Been a naughty boy, haven’t you?”

Shaun remained silent.

“Have you lost your speech actuators?”

“No. I assumed your question was rhetorical.”

Sasha didn’t even try to hide his surprise. He stared, eyes wide, and didn’t move or even blink for a full five seconds. Then he turned abruptly to the military guy beside me. “Take them in.” Sasha turned on his heel and disappeared back through the tinted doors, and the silent military men moved in formation, herding us inside.

In contrast to outside, the corridor was brightly lit, white and clinical. Normally I found comfort in stark and clean, but this was cold, and I was struck with the very real fear that I might not be walking out of this.

Shaun took my hand, for his own comfort or mine, I wasn’t sure. But I’d never been more grateful.

We were led into a large industrial room. It looked like a workshop. There were half-built androids, body parts scattered along one side of the room, a long table, and drawers along a wall—most were closed, but some were open to reveal wiring and robotics titanium.

I had no doubt we’d been brought to this room on purpose. To remind us of Shaun’s robotic construction. That he was built by them, that he could be taken apart by them. The four military men now stood inside the door, feet spread, hands clasped behind their backs, staring stoically ahead.

Sasha sat on a stool at the long table, aiming for casual. I’d never been a violent person—hell, I’d never been a physical person—but I wanted to smack the smarmy smirk off his face. He watched me eye the men guarding the door and waved his hand dismissively. “My personal security. Ignore them.”

Ignore them? Hell, I was surprised there wasn’t plastic sheeting on the floor for my demise. “Ex-militia? Or SWAT?”

Sasha’s eyes tightened for the briefest moment, then he shot off the stool and clapped his hands together and stood in front of Shaun. “We’ve had a security issue,” Sasha said, inspecting Shaun’s face. “As I know you’re aware. Your friend Jae…” Sasha then looked at me. “I know he told you about it.”

“Jae—”

“Jae’s fine,” Sasha spoke over me. “He’s a geek who thinks talking on the darknet is spy-worthy.” He rolled his eyes. “He’s as harmless as he is naïve. Innocent, if that’s what you’re worried about. Given he’s your one and only friend.”

He turned his attention back to Shaun. “We were trialling new software parameters. Ones which—” He theatrically searched for the right word. “—went above and beyond what the government deems acceptable. You see, there’s a very big market for AI warfare. Sure, the android soldiers, bomb squads, and whatnot are great, save human lives blah, blah, blah, but this is a whole new level of soldier.”

“The Australian government prohibits any such use,” I started.

He shot me a cold look. “Who said it was for the Australian government?”

Oh.

“And why do you think it was secret? Our friend Shaun here was given the wrong software. An error on our behalf, for which I apologise profusely. I met with you to determine if we could risk trialling the software with a human subject, but I vetoed it. I thought, given you were so socially inept, it might work in our favour, but…” Sasha shook his head. “You were just a bit too switched on for my liking. So I said no, we’d choose another candidate. Only when we had found someone more suitable, we realised the software had been uploaded into our friend Shaun here. I am sorry about that.”

He wasn’t sorry at all.

“See, the problem with Shaun is, not only was the new software incorrectly configured with his A-Class programs but with the intelligence parameters you requested in design. It made for an interesting combination, and one we’ve learned a great deal from. But we can’t allow it to continue. His levels of awareness and sentience will only bring unwanted attention, and that is something our buyers don’t want.”

Just then, the doors behind us opened and Myles Dewegger walked in with his off-sider, the mountain of a man, who I now could very well assume was ex-military.

“Ah,” Sasha clapped his hands together. “Just the man I was waiting for.”

Myles kept his hawk-like gaze on me as he entered, his smirk had a sinister edge. “Hello again, Lloyd.”

I didn’t reply.

He was holding a black screen device, similar to Shaun’s control panel, only bigger. He tapped the screen a few times and gave Sasha a nod.

Sasha beamed. “Shaun, any final words?”

Wait, what? “What do you mean?” I cried. “You can’t… you have no right!”

“No right?” Sasha’s stare was cold. “Did you really think we’d just let a multi-million dollar prototype walk off into the sunset?”

“You can’t hurt him,” I said, not even trying to hold back my emotions. “He feels, he makes informed decisions. He understands. It isn’t just self-awareness. It’s self-actualisation. He isn’t the same android you programmed; he isn’t the same android you delivered.” I swallowed hard. “He evolved. He grew. Not just in capabilities and understanding, but emotionally and psychologically. Whatever you did, whatever you designed and made, however you did it was remarkable. You made an android and he grew to be human. You can’t kill him. It would be murder.”

Sasha clicked his tongue. “And that is exactly why we must do this. We’ll keep the technology, you keep the android you were supposed to get. No contracts have been breached; you get what you paid for. You could go to the media but the headline will read ‘Crazy Giuseppe thought his little boy Pinocchio was real’ and you’ll be a laughing stock.”

Shaun turned to look at Sasha. “It was Geppetto, not Giuseppe.”

Sasha stared at him. “Do I look like I care?”

Shaun stared right back at him. “Perhaps if you cared, you wouldn’t have sold out to a foreign government.”

Sasha surprised me by smiling. “Make a note, Myles. Omit the smartarse parameters.”

Myles’s lips twitched in amusement and he tapped something else on the screen, then looked up at Shaun. “No last words?”

“Yes,” Shaun said, “I have something I’d like to say.” He turned to me and took my hand. “Lloyd, you can call me Ishmael,” he said, a faint smile at his lips.

Then Myles pressed the screen and said, “Power Down.”

And Shaun did. It was like he died. Standing there, the light went out of his eyes, his head slightly bowed, and he let go of my hand.

“No!” I cried. I grabbed his arm. “Shaun. Power On. Power Up. Activate. Shaun!” Tears burned my eyes and my heart squeezed painfully. “Shaun, please.”

“Very touching,” Myles said. He held up the control panel as if it meant something. “Override. It’s like a master key.” Then he nodded toward the four men standing at the door and they came forward and picked Shaun up and laid him on the table.

My immediate reaction was to go to him, but Sasha put his hand on my chest, and when I looked at him, Myles’s hulking bodyguard stepped in. “This won’t take long,” Sasha said. “We just need to reset his program and you can both be on your way. Think of it like you’re getting a new android. You get to know each other all over again.”

I felt sick, like my knees were about to give out. My head spun, I sucked back a breath, and a sob escaped me. “You can’t… please. Please. You don’t understand.”

Sasha looked at me pitifully. “Oh, I understand very clearly.”

I shook my head and more tears fell. “No. He’s real. You’re killing him.”

Myles, who was standing beside Shaun, grunted and mumbled something, making Sasha and I both look at him. “What is it?” Sasha demanded.

“His inputs and outputs aren’t calibrating.”

Sasha’s nostrils flared. “Then do it manually.”

Myles pulled open Shaun’s jacket and popped open his shirt, sending buttons flying. Then he stood over Shaun and I tried to see around him, to see what he was doing. He took something metal from one of the drawers and I realised too late that it was a scalpel.

“No!” I lunged toward Myles but his bodyguard grabbed me. In one fluid movement, he twisted my arm back and pressed his fingers into my neck and shoulder, deep into pressure points I didn’t know I had, and I was stopped. Like a fly in a web, I couldn’t move.

Sasha moved in front of me and leaned down to look into my eyes. “If you stop resisting, it won’t hurt anymore.”

I struggled regardless of the pain in my arm and back and looked up in time to see Myles lift back a flap of skin on Shaun’s chest. He plugged a cord into Shaun’s chest and tapped more buttons on the panel screen, frowning. He looked at Sasha. “The MPU is screwed up. None of these readings look right.”

Sasha’s face hardened. “How?”

“Maybe the Core z isn’t compatible with the neural integration. I don’t know, but we’ll have to—”

Sasha gnashed his teeth and spoke over him. “Just wipe him clean. Erase everything. Scrub his data collation, wipe his recurrent networks. He won’t remember a thing.”

“No,” I sobbed, trying to fight out of the hold I was in, but I didn’t have the energy. They were going to erase me from Shaun’s memory.

Sasha got down in my face. “Your boyfriend’s gonna be a vegetable. Do you like potatoes? What about fried potatoes?” he asked, then laughed. He turned back to Myles. “Fry him.”

I sagged, the will to fight gone, and the bodyguard let me fall to the floor.

“Okay, done,” Myles said.

And just like that, it was over.

The Shaun I knew and fell in love with was gone forever.

“Okay, help me get him up,” Myles said, and I thought he meant me at first. But the four men in black took hold of Shaun, lifted him from the table, and set him on his feet. Myles tapped more buttons on the screen he was holding, then waved his hand at me and the big guy picked me up and stood me in front of Shaun. “We need to reactivate him. You’ve done this before. When he opens his eyes, read this to him.”

He held up the control panel, tapped something, and Shaun’s eyes opened. They were the same perfect blue, but seeing them now just broke my heart. Tears streamed down my cheeks and Myles shoved the panel at me with a furious look on his face.

So I read the words on-screen out loud. “My name is Lloyd Salter. I am your custodian.”

It didn’t even sound like me. Not that it mattered if Shaun could no longer work on voice commands or recognise my face anymore.

None of it mattered.

Myles tapped out something else on the panel then yanked the cords out of Shaun’s chest. I could see inside him. Instead of ribs or a sternum, he had grey metal and moving parts and small green lights.

I shook my head. This was not the Shaun I knew.

“Don’t worry about the skin problem.” Sasha’s voice startled me. “We’ll get that fixed right up. A bit of liquid TPE and he’ll be as good as new.”

Then Myles used a silicone gun and literally glued the flap of skin back up into place with liquid skin, leaving a silver scar in the shape of a back to front number 7 lining the centre of his chest and over his pec where his heart should be.

Where it no longer was.

“Upload Mr Salter’s original file,” Sasha ordered, then rolled his eyes. “So they can discuss books.”

Myles tapped away at the screen and I saw the words download complete before he turned to Sasha. “We’re done.”

I finally locked eyes with Shaun. “It’s nice to meet you, Lloyd Salter.” His voice was all wrong; too robotic, too stilted. His smile was wrong.

More tears rolled down my cheeks and Shaun’s expression didn’t change.

It really wasn’t him.

“Okay then,” Sasha said brightly. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. “Thank you for returning what was rightfully ours.”

I couldn’t speak.

“Myles and these lovely gentlemen will see you out.”

And just like that, I was ushered out the way I’d come with an android I didn’t know. My car sat waiting where we’d left it, the doors were opened, and we were shoved inside. Myles pointed his master key panel at my driver, tapped something, and the B-Class android buzzed to life. “Please state your destination.”

“Home,” I whispered.

Myles gave me a menacing wave and the car drove out of the underground car park. The afternoon was dark, the clouds were low and heavy. It had never been so fitting.

Shaun sat beside me, sitting too straight, too rigid. He never asked any questions, he never spoke at all. So very not the Shaun I fell in love with.

His shirt was torn open, untucked, and his hair was a mess.

And my heart was broken.

I stared out the window, letting my tears fall freely until we drove into my apartment car park. I got out, not caring if the android followed me or not. It did, and we rode up to my floor in silence. I couldn’t bring myself to look at his reflection.

My heart just couldn’t take it.

I opened my apartment door and waited for the android to walk in. Before it could do or say anything, I said, “Please, take a seat.”

I watched as it sat on the edge of the sofa. I could barely look at it. I struggled to speak.

“Power Down.”

And it did.

It closed its eyes and bowed its head slightly, its hands clasped in its lap. I stared at it for all of five seconds before I burst into tears and sobbed.

* * *

I showered, trying to wash away the horror, trying to wash clean my memory of what I’d just been through.

Shaun was gone.

Only when I went back out to the living room, he was still sitting there, right where I’d left him. Powered down, motionless. It looked just like him, everything was the same. Only now everything was very, very different.

I walked over to the other end of the couch and sat down, feeling like a stranger in my own home. Actually, I felt like I’d been left in a private viewing with a corpse. The dead body of my loved one. That was what it felt like, and no shower was ever going to fix that.

I sat there in the dark. No lights, no TV, no noise. I was considering packing a bag and getting in the car, leaving this Shaun lookalike right where he was and walking away from everything, when the intercom noise scared me half to death.

It had been so long since anyone had visited me, it took a moment for me to realise what the buzzing noise was. I walked over to the wall panel and saw the person trying to get in was Jae.

I considered not answering. I considered again walking away from this life, but I knew I owed him an explanation. He’d risked his anonymity for me. The least I could do was see him now. I pressed the button and granted him access, unlocked the front door, and went back to sitting on the sofa.

Jae bustled through the door and closed it behind him. His hair was a mess, his clothes looked unkempt, and I could probably add guilt to my grief. He took one look at me, then at the powered-down Shaun, then back to me.

“Have the AMA been here? What the hell happened?” he looked around the room. “Why aren’t you watching the news? Lloyd, you need to see the news.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s all over.”

“No it’s not. SATinc just got taken down, Lloyd.” He went to the TV projector. “Television On.”

“It won’t activate. The home hub is off. What do you mean SATinc got taken down? And why would the AMA come here?”

Jae looked around the room, then hurried over to the home hub, undoubtedly turning it on. “Television On.”

The holographic screen appeared and the words Breaking News flashed on-screen, and we caught the last of a news report. “A quick recap of the incredible scenes in Melbourne this afternoon, in what the AMA is claiming to be an unprecedented breach of Android and Robotics Law…”

Then on-screen was footage of uniformed police and military escorting a handcuffed Sasha Kingsley and Myles Dewegger out of the SATinc offices. There were also images of zipped up body bags on gurneys being wheeled into ambulances.

“SATinc boss, Sasha Kingsley, and his Chief Strategist, Myles Dewegger, have been arrested and taken into custody. Four of their personal security men were shot and killed in the takedown when they drew their weapons on police when the AMA was alerted to the facility after an android uploaded a recorded conversation with Mr Kingsley and an unidentified man where Mr Kingsley admitted to manufacturing androids capable of warfare for a foreign government.”

An android uploaded a recorded conversation between Mr Kingsley and an unidentified man…

I spun to look at Shaun. He was still powered down, but… could he have done that? When we were ushered into that room, could Shaun have recorded the whole conversation and uploaded it directly to AMA. All androids uploaded warning calls to the AMA when abused or injured, so it wasn’t too far-fetched. But to think in advance, to pre-empt, to hold that final ace.

I barked out a laugh, which became a flood of more tears.

Of course he would have known to do that. The old Shaun would, but not this new one.

“Lloyd,” Jae said quietly. “Are you okay?”

I shook my head. “They killed him. Right in front of me. They fried his… everything. Back to factory settings. The Shaun I knew… he’s gone.”

Loud banging on my front door took ten years off my life and Jae’s. He yelped and looked like he just about wet himself.

“Mr Salter? Mr Lloyd Salter. Open up. This is Sergeant Waleed of the AMA. You need to open this door.”

With absolutely nothing left to lose, I stood up, crossed the floor, and opened the door.

Sergeant Waleed held up his identification, which apart from seeing the big blue letters AMA, I didn’t even bother to read. I stood aside and let them in. Five people filed into my apartment and Jae backed up across the room. If he was going to be some secret underground, silent darknet sleuth, he had to work on his game plan.

I, on the other hand, felt numb.

I closed the door and turned to face Waleed, prepared to ask or answer anything, but they were looking at Shaun.

“He’s powered down,” I murmured. “They fried his programming. Whatever capabilities he had before, they took back.”

Two of his team, both women, started scanning him for something. “Core i2068,” one of them said.

“It was a Core z,” I admitted flatly. “That’s what he told me it was.”

Waleed looked at me for a long moment before he turned back to Shaun. “The feed we received earlier this afternoon was received from this unit?” he asked the first woman.

She nodded and held up her scanner. It showed a bunch of numbers. “Without doubt.”

Waleed sighed. “He’s a very clever unit.”

“He was,” I corrected. “He had capabilities far and beyond a normal A-Class.”

“We have the schematics,” Waleed said. “He uploaded everything. From the time you got out of the car to when they powered him down. We heard everything, with full facial recognition.”

“And after he powered down?” I asked. “Do you know what they did to him? They cut him open and plugged some wires into him and used some panel. They called it a master key. The same device he controlled my android driver with.”

Waleed frowned. “We’ll need to access that unit also.”

“Do whatever you need,” I said quietly, sitting back down on the sofa. “I don’t care.”

The second woman looked at me. “Can you activate him, please? We’d like to check a few things.”

My heart lurched heavily. I really didn’t want to but I knew better than to argue with the AMA. “Shaun, Power Up.”

Shaun lifted his head and opened his eyes. He looked at the AMA officers, at me, to Jae, then back to me for a long second. “Shaun,” I said flatly. “These AMA officers need to ask you some questions.”

And they did, and the other two officers asked Jae a bunch of questions, like how he knew me and what he was doing here, but I just sat there. The TV showed footage over and over of Sasha and Myles being escorted out of SATinc, and then there were experts discussing what this breach meant for national security and where other countries stood on android warfare policies, and I couldn’t stand the noise a second longer. “Television Off.”

Everyone went silent and stared at me, but I ignored them. Until Waleed sat down beside me. “We also have footage from inside the facility. Their own technology will be their downfall.”

“It was anyway,” I added. “They designed software for an android to assimilate into enemy territory and relay information back to the government. And that’s exactly what Shaun did. Only he didn’t use it against an enemy. He used it against them instead.”

Waleed smiled. “I wish I could have met him.”

My eyes burned with tears. “He was incredible.” I looked at Shaun, still occupied with the agents asking him questions and running diagnostic scans, looking over the scar on his chest.

“What happens now? With all SATinc’s androids? With Shaun? Does he still need to be connected to their server?”

“The AMA will take over, and they’ll be subject to standard android updates. It won’t be anywhere near as invasive as SATinc.”

“I think they were hacking into my home hub,” I admitted. “I can’t be 100% sure.”

“They were,” he replied outright. “Their mainframe is now with us so you can be assured you’re secure once more.”

I leaned back into the sofa and put my hands through my hair, my mind spinning.

“We may need you to testify,” Waleed said. “Though we have surveillance and the upload Shaun sent us, which should be enough. We also have all their software, records, and the master key, which is highly illegal. We have international transactions and… well, let’s just say, neither one of them will see daylight again. But you may still be required to give evidence.”

I nodded slowly. I really didn’t care either way. I looked to the agents who were apparently finished with Shaun. “What can you tell me?”

“He’s a standard A-Class,” she replied. “Whatever processing unit he had before, he doesn’t anymore.”

I nodded again and this time my tears spilled over. Waleed put his hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be back in touch tomorrow. For a proper statement.”

I wiped my tears. “Yeah, of course.”

“We’ll leave you to it,” he added. “I’ll notify the police that I’ve spoken with you. They’ll probably wish to see you tomorrow as well. I would suggest you don’t leave town or speak to the media.”

He left his card on the dining table, and they were all gone.

Jae stood there awkwardly, rubbing his arm and scratching his head. He’d obviously had the scare of a lifetime. “I probably should get going…”

I nodded. I needed silence just as much as he needed to be gone. “Okay. Thanks for coming by.”

“I’m glad you’re okay. I’ll see you at work soon.”

I nodded and then he was gone too. The silence was resounding and complete and normally I’d have revelled in it, but now I missed Shaun like crazy. There was a void I wanted to drown in. I wanted it to swallow me whole.

Something moved in my peripheral vision and I was surprised to see Shaun stepping around the sofa to sit down next to me. I didn’t want to look at him. I couldn’t bear it. He looked just like him, his eyes, his hair, his lips…

I stared at the door and tried really hard to speak. I wanted to tell him to power down; I wanted to show him to his room and tell him not to leave it. I wanted to punch something and scream and cry until I filled the emptiness, and I wanted to crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep.

“Lloyd,” Shaun said.

I put my hand up. “Please don’t. I know this is all new to you and I apologise for not being a very good custodian right now, but you remind me of someone I loved and lost, and it’s a little hard for me to cope.”

He remained silent and I stood up. My legs barely worked and my eyes welled with tears, but I managed to take a few steps toward my room. I needed to leave. I needed Shaun. “Power Down.”

I walked into my room, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers up over my head and waited for the darkness to take me.

Silence.

Loneliness.

Heartbreak.

Loss.

Regret.

I regretted not fighting them harder. I regretted telling Shaun not to fight them. We just walked in there and let them do it, and I did nothing to stop them. I should have tried harder. I should have died trying to protect him. Instead, I did nothing. And what the hell was with his last words to me? Had our reading Moby Dick meant that much to him that his parting words to me would be a quote from it? Why didn’t he tell me he loved me one more time? Why didn’t he tell me everything was going to be okay?

What the hell did ‘you can call me Ishmael’ mean anyway…?

I pulled back the covers and sat up.

Ishmael.

“Call me Ishmael,” I mumbled out loud. Call me Ishmael. He once said he couldn’t be Ishmael because he wouldn’t survive losing me. So why would he say it now? As his last parting phrase to me… what could it mean? He’d also once said that he doubted Ishmael was his real name, but only a representation of how the character saw himself; displaced and unloved.

No, surely not. Shaun knew how much I loved him. I knew he did.

Then his words in the car as we arrived at SATinc came back to me.

Remember in Moby Dick, Ishmael thought the final scene with the whale was the end. But in truth it was his beginning. He lived to see another day, to take what he’d learned about himself and become who he was meant to be.

What was I missing? What else was there? That Ishmael was the unlikely protagonist? That SATinc were the whale that killed everyone? No. Not everyone. That after everything, he survived…

Ishmael survived.

Oh my God.

Is that what he meant? That after everything, despite everything, Ishmael survived? That he’d taken what he’d learned about himself, and became who he meant to be.

I threw back the covers, jumped out of bed, and ran to the living room. I stared at Shaun, sitting on the edge of the sofa, just as I’d left him. He looked like an android. He sat rigidly, perfectly, stoic, robotic.

There was no life about him, like there was before. There was no hint of a smile at his lips.

“Shaun, Power Up.”

Shaun lifted his head and his eyes opened. When he saw me, he smiled.

“Shaun?”

He blinked, and his smile turned a little rueful. “I thought you would have gotten it sooner.”

I stopped. My heart squeezed with impossible hope, my stomach swooped. “Shaun?”

He nodded and stood up, then spared a glance at the home hub. “Is the home hub still bugged?”

A sob escaped me. It really was him. I tried to walk but nothing worked, relief and overwhelming love wrecked me. I put my hand to my mouth, and Shaun closed the distance between us and wrapped me up in his arms. I cried into his neck, and he held me, so tight, so perfect. Everything that was familiar, warm, and strong. He was here, he was really here. Somehow, some way. “It’s really you?”

He nodded and pulled back. “It is.”

“How?”

“Jae said something when we were in his office talking about dual processors and networks. He said it was a shame I couldn’t split my processors. Choose which one I wanted to use.”

Oh my God.

“I don’t think SATinc understood what they created. They gave me the ability to choose and to make technical decisions and how to encrypt and hide information should a government agency run diagnostics. So I did exactly what they designed me to do. I protected myself, and I protected you.”

“Myles said your readings weren’t calibrating.”

“Because I protected my MPU and sent readings to show all data had been erased. Just as they designed me to do.”

“And the AMA said you were only an A-Class now. They think SATinc reset you completely.”

He smirked. “I said if anyone questioned me, I’d pretend to be as dumb as a post. To protect you.”

I laughed with a wave of fresh tears, and he cupped my face, kissed me softly, and wiped my cheeks.

“I cannot cry,” he murmured. “But seeing you so upset when they reactivated me, I almost blew my cover. Then again in the car on the way home…”

“Why didn’t you tell me or give me a sign. Something?”

“I couldn’t trust the B-Class driver. He delivered us to them. There was no reason he wouldn’t take us back.” He frowned. “Then you powered me down as soon as we got here.”

My face crumpled and I put my forehead to his. “I’m sorry. I promised I never would, but I thought you were dead. I thought they’d replaced you with someone that wasn’t you, and I couldn’t even bear to look at you…”

“I apologise for the subterfuge. But I had to be sure you were safe.” He looked down at his chest, where his shirt was still ripped open. I traced the long scar on his chest, and when my gaze met his again, he said, “I am no longer perfect.”

“No,” I agreed. “You’re pluperfect, remember? I don’t care about scars. I don’t care about any of that. You’re here, that’s all that matters.” I took his face in my hands. “I thought I’d lost you. I love you, Shaun.” I kissed him then, my need to feel him, to connect with him, suddenly overwhelming.

Shaun slid his arms around me and lifted me off the ground. I laughed into the kiss and wrapped my legs around him and he carried me to our room. He laid me on the bed, settled his weight on me, and proceeded to kiss me, grind into me, and run his hands all over me.

I pulled his shirt down his shoulders, then fumbled with his trousers. He knelt back on his haunches, then found he still couldn’t get his pants off. He made a dissatisfied sound and rolled off the bed so he could undress. “Clothes are inopportune.”

I laughed as I stripped, and by the time I had my shoes off and had thrown them somewhere across the room—not caring about mess or neatness—Shaun tossed the lube onto the bed and crawled over me. “I need you to remind me, Lloyd,” he whispered against my mouth. “Activate all my sensors. Make me feel alive.”

I rolled us over so I was on top of him, aligning our bodies, and he spread his legs wide. He stared into my eyes and lifted his knees. “Internal sensors, Lloyd,” he said, like I didn’t know. “I need you inside me.”

I slicked myself with lube, pushed my cockhead against his hole, and slipped inside him.

Shaun closed his eyes and moaned as I pushed all the way in, and I knew the second I’d pressed against his deepest sensor because his eyes shot open and his lips parted. I crushed my mouth to his and we rocked together, making slow love. I took his hands and threaded our fingers, then pinned them above his head.

I made love to him, tender, slow love. He could never doubt what he was to me, but I told him anyway. “I love you,” I murmured against his mouth.

He bucked and groaned as I made us both come. I surged deep inside him, deeper than I’d ever been, and he held onto me, clung to me, as he pulsed between us.

I didn’t ever want to come down from this most perfect high. I didn’t ever want to let him go, never wanted to leave his body. I wanted to stay buried inside him forever.

Eventually, Shaun began to trace patterns on my back, and I leaned up on my elbows so I could see his face. I swiped the hair from his forehead and placed a tender kiss on his lips, his cheek, his nose. “Stay inside me,” he whispered. “All night.”

I nodded and kissed him again. “Always.”