Sunday’s motel room might look different from Saturday’s, but it felt exactly the same. Impersonal. Generic. Lonely.

It wasn’t the motel’s fault. Quentin doubted the penthouse suite of the most exclusive hotel in the city would have felt any better. He’d gotten used to sleeping next to Ian, or at the very least to having his face in 3D on the nexus, so they could talk before bed when one of them was away. Yesterday had been the first time he’d gone to sleep without talking to his husband since they’d moved in together.

Quentin shook his head to clear the cobwebs. He had to stop thinking of Ian as his husband, even if ex-husband sounded inaccurate. Ian was someone else’s husband; someone who didn’t exist. And Quentin didn’t want to forget him, not ever — he wouldn’t spend so long reviewing memories of the last ten years if he did — but another night had passed and he was no closer to figuring out his next step, so he had to put Ian away, for a little while. His past wasn’t going anywhere.

Next on the agenda: a shower.

Showering was a frightening, if necessary, endeavour. The hole in his sternum had stopped shrinking, and to wrap it in plastic film felt surreal when there were organs — actual organs — functioning over his core mechanism, visible inside. Pain had dropped to an acceptable level, proof that he could control some things, but not others. The data he had access to told him he didn’t need any of those organs, which was a relief. They were a design feature, a stealth enhancement, conceived to fool scans, and—

Alone under the shower spray, he giggled like a madman. Had he really just thought to himself it was a relief he didn’t need his organs? Maybe he’d damaged his emotions chip in the crash — laughter kept bubbling up in the most inappropriate situations, and tears followed it far too often.

Less than two days and he’d already embraced he was nothing but a bot.

At least clothes hid the unseemly hole, even if they didn’t make knowledge of it any less disturbing.

The corresponding hole in his back had closed with relative ease, on its own, without any input. What was wrong with the chest wound? He ran a diagnostic test. The ability should be there, to regenerate the synthetic flesh, the skin over it, but he couldn’t access it — didn’t know where to begin.

What he did know was that he no longer needed a nexus to access the web. He could do it with a thought, sift through whatever knowledge he sought, without people being the wiser.

People being the operative word.

He could feel them — other BioSynths — in the web. Researching, hacking, shopping, watching. Some just watched. He didn’t know who the others were — knew they wouldn’t know who he was, either, unless he chose to interact — but the crawling sensation of a million eyes on the back of his neck made him want to run, to lock the door, to shut himself down entirely.

A million spiders on the web, and Quentin was a fly.

And, with his next search, he had no alternative but to give those watching another piece of the puzzle of his identity.

BSYN21069. Search.

There was so little information available, even in places rarely travelled, that he still couldn’t get what he needed. No information on his abilities. How to repair. How to cloak. How to construct a different persona from scratch, without giving away who he was with the first press of an analogue shutter.

Ian had to be tearing the city apart, looking for a missing husband who’d never return home. Quentin didn’t want someone to recognise him from the inevitable nexus ads Ian would buy, but he couldn’t stay locked up within four walls either. He had to find a job, a home, start over. He wouldn’t last long without learning how to alter his appearance.