Commander Lucas Von blew a cloud of white across the window. “We have to go. Turn around. We have to leave. Now!”

I put the car in park and lowered my window for a better look. “Hello?” I called out.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Something came out of the wreckage. It stood at my height and walked on two legs like a person. But it wore no clothes, and its skin shone as brightly as the bike parked nearby. Its face had been sculpted into the general shape of a human’s with no defined features, and the Genesis logo—the letter G shaped to look like a human profile on one side and a gear on the other—glowed in red on its right shoulder.

“It’s a security bot.” I relaxed. “One of the new Android Replacement models. It’s probably just filing a report.”

“Listen to me. I’m in trouble, alright? I can’t tell you the details, but you have to trust me. If that bot comes over here, it’s going to kill us.”

“Kill us?” I laughed. “Security bots can’t hurt people. It goes against their programming. And they probably doubled down on that programming with the new ARs. Only humans are allowed to kill humans. Actually, it might be able to help.” I poked my head out of the window. “Hey, bot!”

It was already marching toward the car. A slot in its leg opened and it reached inside for a tablet. Or rather, that’s what I thought it was reaching for. When it retracted its hand, it held something narrow, black, and metallic, but decidedly not a tablet.

“What the? Is that...” I narrowed my eyes for a better look. “Holy crap! That thing has a gun!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, you idiot!”

I ducked to avoid the bullet that hit the windshield, and judging by the cursing in the back seat, Commander Lucas Von did too. Grabbing hold of the wheel, I straightened out so I could easily maneuver the car if I needed to. We may not have been armed, but we weren’t defenseless. We were riding a five-thousand-pound ramming machine.

“Get us out of here!” Commander Lucas Von demanded.

“I have an idea,” I replied.

“What? No! Screw your ideas!”

“Disable all safeties, Pumpkin.”

“Authorization required.”

I punched in the code, listened for confirmation, and leaned my seat into Commander Lucas Von’s lap. He complained, but it was better for me to lean back and bug him than sit up and get shot in the head. Peeking above the wheel, I spotted the security bot climbing up the side of the crater. Dead ahead.

I threw the car back into drive and slammed on the accelerator. The tires spun in the grass before gaining traction and throwing us forward. Up and over the dirt barrier at the maximum speed an SUV can achieve in half a second, we flew.

“Collision imminent,” Pumpkin said.

The car smashed into the bot and pinned it between the front bumper and Commander Lucas Von’s ship. The impact crushed and crumpled the metal of the ship, bot, and vehicle hood. I felt like the mixer ball in a protein shake, jostled around mercilessly in my container, but there was no time to recover. The bot had been pinned but wasn’t down. It was still moving.

“You have experienced an accident,” Pumpkin blabbed. “Please remain calm.”

The bot clawed at the front of the car with both hands. It must have dropped its weapon. Unfortunately, a machine like that could break our necks with a flick of its wrist. If it managed to writhe its way out, it wouldn’t need a gun to have its way with us.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Commander Lucas Von said.

I climbed out of the car. “What am I fetching?”

“Huh?”

“What am I fetching out of your ship? You point, remember?”

“Forget that, jackass! Get back in here!”

“I’m going into that ship, and it’ll be a lot faster if you tell me what I’m looking for.”

He punched the back of the seat as opposed to my face. “There’s a manpack behind the seat of the cockpit. It’s a green bag with a radio, antenna, and a few other things in it. That’s the easiest thing to grab.”

“Got it. Keep an eye on the tin-man. Yell at me if it gets out. I’ll be right back.”

“Civilian. You are interfering with an emergency operation,” the bot recited as I passed. “Stand down.” The sound of its fingers tearing into the hood pierced my eardrums like a scream. Every movement squealed and shrieked as it wriggled and bent the metal encasing it.

I ran around to the front of the cockpit, searching for the best way to climb aboard. The same way I’d come down with Commander Lucas Von was safest but scrambling up the side of the ship would be quickest. It was how I got to him in the first place, and I was running on as much energy as I was then. I could do it.

I reached for the hull and paused. Each time a drop of rain struck, it hissed and evaporated. Heat met my palms as if I’d stuck my hand into an oven. I could feel it burning me before I even touched the surface.

“Civilian. You are interfering with an emergency operation,” the bot said again.

“Kid!” yelled Commander Lucas Von.

I didn’t need the warning to know what was happening. The squeaking and squealing had turned into popping and snapping. It wouldn’t be long before the bot broke free.

Oh, what the hell? I wouldn’t need my hands anymore when this was over.

My skin sizzled against the ship, and I bit my lip to hold in a scream. No reason to alert Commander Lucas Von. He seemed like a worrier. My shoes shielded my feet from the worst of it but afforded my hands no such protection. I wasn’t sure which was worse, the initial touch or the sticking as I jerked away, like peeling a chunk of meat off of an ungreased pan. Either way, pain proved an effective motivator. I arrived at the cockpit in no time.

The chair’s cushions had burned away. All that remained was the piping hot metal frame. Lovely. Its edges burned my fingers as I pulled it out of the way. The manpack wasn’t there, but the tattered ashes of what might have once been a bag blew about in the wind. A green box sat atop a pile of gear, and its keypad face glowed in the shadows. Looked like a radio to me.

A roiling pain radiated through my hands when I picked it up. I bit my lip hard enough to break skin, and a bitter taste rushed over my tongue.

My knees buckled as I jumped from the cockpit, and dirt stuck to my bleeding fingers as I got up and sprinted to the car. The bot had squeezed its pelvis out and was working on its legs. I tossed the radio through the window onto the passenger seat and a layer of skin went with it. A gasp burst out of me, but I kept my hands low so Commander Lucas Von couldn’t see the damage.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“Yeah, but where’s the rest?”

“The rest?”

“Nothing. Nevermind. Just get in.”

“What do you mean the rest?”

He eyed the bot and then me. “The antenna. I need it, too. And the battery pack and handset. But—”

Back to the cockpit I went. Damn. I had to climb again. There was nearly nothing left of my hands by the time I got there. Tears poured down my face like a waterfall, but I pressed on. If my last act on Earth was to help Commander Lucas Von, then I might as well make it count. 

I scooped up the black contraption I prayed was the antenna, a block that could have been a battery, and the handset I knew was a handset because it looked exactly like an old phone. Resigning myself to the dirt again, shot around the ship to the car, and threw the things in the window.

“Is that everything?” I asked.

“For Christ’s sake! Yes! Let’s go!”

In the comfort of the driver’s seat once more, I shifted the car into reverse and backed away from the ship. Touching the wheel with my ravaged hands was hell, so I steered with my forearms. Pumpkin pushed up the side of the crater and onto the grass like a champ. In the rearview mirror, I watched the bot fall, collect something from the ground (a gun, if I had to guess), and mount its motorbike.

I threw caution to the wind and launched over the terrain like a mad-man, doing everything I could to watch for rocks and bumps but failing miserably. Every bounce, jerk, and rattle reverberated up my arms, forcing me to relive the burning pain over and over. Commander Lucas Von shouted something about his stitches, and his fingers dug into my seat.

Pumpkin’s engine roared, but I could still make out the sound of the motorbike approaching from the rear. No shots fired. The bot wouldn’t bother. My father taught me that, unlike on TV where a well-aimed shot could cause an explosion, firing on moving vehicles in real life was nothing but a waste of bullets. Especially with a handgun.

I found myself thinking very logically in this way, about what the security bot was doing and what it might do next. But also of nothing else. The calculations running in my brain required the utmost concentration, and the rest of the world became a blur. It was a miracle we made it back to the lake house without crashing, but in this state of computerized thought, I realized something else. 

We needed a crowd. Genesis Robotics was on thin ice with the public. They wouldn’t risk one of their bots killing someone on camera. We needed to go somewhere with other people, all of whom would be carrying phones. If we made it that far, it would back down.

We raced up the street, past the neighbors’ houses, and onto the county highway where at least four other vehicles were passing by. A horn wailed as I cut off the third, tearing into the road at full speed. And I was right. The bot didn’t follow.

A red light flashed across the windshield to warn me I was breaking the law, but I had to ride it out until the car’s regulatory safeguards kicked in. The government controlled speed on public roads. Once their overrides took hold, we’d brake whether we wanted to or not. But until then, I had to get as much space between us and that bot as I could.

Commander Lucas Von’s bearded face appeared between the front seats. I hoped he was climbing up to inspect the gear on the passenger seat. But he wasn’t. He was looking at me. At my arms.

The law caught up with us, and the car’s speed subsided.

“Manual operation no longer available,” Pumpkin said. “You have been issued a citation by local authorities.”

I expelled a heavy breath.

My skin had peeled back in chunks, melted, and burned away. But beneath wasn’t muscle, tendon, or bone. Red fluid made to look like blood oozed out of glass, wire, and metal components. Etchings of numbers labeled each piece for assembly, not by nature but by man. My body had been perfectly crafted to mimic that of a human being in every way, but the blinds were pulled back now. There was no denying the truth.

“You’re an android,” Commander Lucas Von said. “Why didn’t you tell me? That changes everything.”

“I didn’t know, either,” I admitted. “Not until a few weeks ago anyway.”

“You didn’t know you were an android?”

I shook my head. “Nobody did.”