“Quin!” The voice is Star’s, as brightly cheerful as her name. “Quin, look! Look what Shag and I found!”

Quin looks up, lifts his visor. “Another heap of junk, I’m guessing.”

But the shape she pulls behind her on a ragged sheet is distinctly human, and when she lugs it into his workshop and lays it out in all its glory, it’s an android.

Quin squats down to survey the damage. The left side of the face has been stripped of its synthetic flesh, leaving a gaping eye socket from which one metal eyeball stares, unblinking and unlit. The metal skull is a sturdy alloy that seems to have stood up to its weathering, showing only faint scratching. The torso is a mess, flaps of synthskin hanging where they’ve been damn near cut away, exposing gashes and mangled metal bones beneath. Most of the wiring is cut or damaged, several of the individual parts in a bad state as well.

The right arm has been torn off at the elbow, though Star managed to find one of the same make which now lays in the android’s lap, some of the fingers bent at a drastic angle. The left leg is missing completely, but Quin guesses, with enough hard work, he can reverse-engineer it based on the right one.

He turns the android over and finds a yawning hole in the back of its head.

Quin hisses a little through his teeth as he pokes around with his finger, feeling frayed and melted wiring, shattered and snapped circuit boards—a whole lotta damage he can’t fix.

“Not worth it,” he says, straightening up. “The main unit’s pretty much shot. I’ll see if there’s anything I can salvage. Some polysynth, maybe.”

“Aw.” Star squats by the android and peers into the hole. “Well, see if you can’t pull the CPU. I bet it’s mad powerful.”

---

“Uh, hey, Quin?”

Quin works free a knot of ruined wire and looks up. “What?”

Star clears her throat and says, “So I hooked up the CPU and memory from that android, and, uh. . .Well, come take a look. You’ll see what I mean.”

He peels off his gloves and follows her into her workspace—a room messy with wires and cables, screens flashing things Quin can’t begin to understand. In the midst of the disarray is a desk strewn with noodle bowls and coffee mugs, where Star’s behemoth of a computer sits.

On screen, past a long line of commands and a bunch of stuff that’s nothing more than word vomit to Quin, is a single blinking line:

> WHERE AM I?

“I keep trying to dig into the android’s programming, but that line retypes as fast as I can delete it,” Star says, plopping into the chair. “He keeps trying to hack my OS too.”

Quin frowns. “You’re telling me you just happened to dig up a sentient android? Come on, Star. Those don’t exist.”

> I EXIST YOU BASTARD

“Oh yeah, he’s got access to my mic and camera too,” Star says casually. “It’s probably trash compared to the sensors he’s used to, but he can see and hear us.”

Quin fights back a shudder and says, “What do you want me to tell you? His body’s beyond repair, and who’s to say he wouldn’t flee right to the GA if I somehow did repair him?”

> THE HELL’S THE ‘GA’?

Star swivels her chair around to face him. “Please, can you try? You’ll have to pretty much rebuild most of him, so can’t you just disable his weapons system or add some sort of kill switch?”

> PUT A FUCKING KILL SWITCH ON ME AND YOU’LL BE DEAD BEFORE YOU BLINK

“Oh, shut up,” Star says, waving dismissively at the screen. “What’re you gonna do? You’re trapped in my computer, unless Quin can rebuild your body.”

“I’m not rebuilding a murderous android!” Quin protests. “You know how it works, Star. I fix them and you reprogram them. If this thing is sentient, that’s a ‘hell nah’ from me.”

“Yes, yes, I know, but you saw the kind of potential he has!” Star says. “We’ve never found another android with systems that complicated. And this level of intelligence. . .He must’ve been thrown out for a reason, and it wasn’t because he wasn’t up to scratch.”

> CAN WE QUIT DISCUSSING ME LIKE I’M NOT HERE?

Quin reads the words and suppresses the urge to pull the android’s cords. “What makes you think he’ll be interested in helping us? He was clearly created to fight us.”

“We should at least give him the chance.”

That shuts Quin up. It’s the one thing he can’t argue with—though he’s still nowhere near happy about the decision he’s about to make.

“Fine. I’ll see if I can fix him up. But if this leads to him running off and telling the GA about all of this, I’m blaming you.”

It takes six months for Quin to repair the android.

Most of this time is spent on wiring and engineering the missing leg, both of which are tedious tasks that wear his patience thin to breaking. He patches up most of the synthskin with polysynth, using as little as he can. The face is beyond his skill level, so he leaves it half-bare.

When the time comes, Quin replaces the CPU and memory, then switches the old power core for a new one.

The android whirs to life at once, his one eyelid blinking as the sensor in the eye calibrates. Then he’s on his feet, his right hand unfolding into a laser pistol which he trains on Quin.

Quin bites back a curse.

“Where’s the kill switch?” the android asks.

Quin bites back a second curse and says, “Left ear.”

The gun stays trained on him while the android disables the little chip in his ear. Only after it’s made useless does the android lower his arm, the barrel retracting as his hand pieces back together.

“What’s your name?” he asks, as if nothing just happened.

“Quin.”

“Thanks for fixing me.”

“. . .You’re welcome?”

The android ponders for a second, then says, “You can call me Ash.”

“Did you come up with that?” Quin asks warily.

Ash’s working eye scans the room as he answers, “Not really. Got any polysynth?”

“. . .” Quin tosses over the half-empty can.

“Thanks.”

Ash pops the cap and—drinks it. All of it, in a few rolling gulps.

Then he tosses the can in the bin and raises his right hand. The tip of his finger splays open and sprays a misty stream of polysynth. Quin watches as the synthetic flesh reappears. In a matter of minutes, Ash’s face is whole again.

It’s a comelier face than Quin’s seen on any of the androids he’s fixed, and that just irritates him.

Ash blinks a couple of times, scrunches up his face. The range of expression surprises Quin more than a little.

He seems satisfied. His gaze moves around the room again, then down his own body. He looks up and asks, “No clothes?”

Heat crawls up Quin’s neck. “We’re not exactly close in size.”

“Fair point.” Ash looks around again, then frowns and says, “Still, a bathrobe or something would’ve been nice.”

“Just—just wait here a second.” Quin turns to leave, then stops, looks back, and says, “Don’t touch anything.”

Five minutes and a bit of haggling later, he returns with a simple robe of Star’s. This he passes to Ash, who puts it on and ties it very casually, with none of the clunky jerkiness of most androids.

“So what now?” Ash asks once decent. “I guess you probably don’t have a ‘conscious robot’ starter pack.”

An incredulous laugh bubbles in Quin’s throat, but he swallows it and says, “. . .We’ve got a spare room. You, uh. . .You can stay there, I guess.”

“Thanks.”