I was relieved he sounded as bewildered as me. Then, I smelled something off. And that wasn't a figure of speech. I literally smelled something. A strange garlic odor loomed in the air, slightly sweet, but stuffy. Shortly after, Commander Lucas Von began to cough. He placed a hand over his chest and the other over his mouth. “Gah, what is that?” he gasped. His fingers reached for my sleeve, and I caught him as he fell. The crutches hit the floor with a clatter.

“Are you alright?” It was a stupid question. He was coughing so hard I expected his lungs to explode from his throat. His full weight pressed into my arms, and I had to set him down against the stairs. His mouth opened as he tried to speak, but nothing came out except a strained crackle.

I threw myself into the door to let in fresh air from outside. The handle snapped and rattled, but the door stayed in place. “Dammit! Wait here. I’m going to find a way out.”

Leaving him to fend for himself, but hoping he wouldn’t have to, I ran through the stairway doors into the main building. The garlic smell slammed into my nose. A thick yellow haze hung from the ceiling like a fog. Not thick enough. Through it, I could still make out the shapes of bodies. Dozens of them, maybe more. Some lay in fetal positions like they’d curled up on their own. Others lay with their limb sprawled out like they’d fought to their last breath to remain standing. I bolted to the closest one, peeled off my glove, and felt her pulse. Still alive! But for how much longer?

Across the enormous circular foyer, around the front desk, and over heaps of bodies of those who had tried before me, I slammed my shoulder into the front door for nothing. It was locked up as tightly as the rear emergency exit. I banged my fists into it to get the attention of the security bots outside, but they didn’t so much as twitch. They stood like metal statues, existing only to prevent passersby from getting too close and discovering the horror inside—and keep those already exposed from escaping.

I could no longer hear Commander Lucas Von’s coughs. He was lying unconscious on the stairs when I went to check on him. I tried the door again, but with no better luck than before. 

I was a machine, not a human. Shouldn’t I have had super strength or something? Knowing I was different and yet somehow exactly the same as everyone else served as an endless source of disappointment. But I took solace in just breathing. The poison hadn’t affected me yet. And why should it? As far as I knew, I didn’t have lungs. And as long as I was functional, was moving, there was a chance for these people.

I searched for solutions back in the foyer, and there, facing the parking lot, saw a white spider web on the glass wall. Of course, it wasn’t actually a spider web but a shatter point where a man had tried to break through. He’d fallen to the ground with a metal stool in his hands, his face locked in an expression of anguish. He may not have finished the job, but I could. 

I took up the stool and swung it with all the human-limited strength I had. A crackling snapped in my ears as I slammed the stool into the glass. The web expanded but didn’t break. 

Again.

The glass buckled like a sheet of thick fabric.

Again.

There was more white on the surface than green.

Again.

The edge of the stool smashed a hole clean through.

I stuck my hands in and peeled the glass away in strips—ignoring the raging fire this ignited in my fingers—until the hole was big enough to climb out. The city smog smelled like a clear spring day compared to the stink of garlic. I hauled the man at the window out first, and then a woman on the other side of the desk. One after another, I lugged bodies through the window, into the parking lot, and laid them onto the damp pavement.

On my sixth round, as I set down a young woman whose lips were bloody from coughing, a security bot caught me in the act.

“Stay back!” I shouted and stood guard over the barely breathing people on the ground. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to hurt these people. We can find another—”

It drew its firearm from the compartment on its leg, and without so much as a warning, shot me.

The bullet hit my abdomen. A second hit my right shoulder. I didn’t know what else to do, so I ran. But not away. I ran straight toward the security bot, taking another bullet in the chest on the way. 

Commander Lucas Von had inadvertently shown me how to twist a bot’s arm to get it to release its weapon, and it worked. I turned the gun against the bot and fired the fourth bullet into its robot head. It collapsed motionless on the ground.

Others would have heard the gunshots. They’d be coming.

My clothes felt warm and wet, but I was still running, so I didn’t stop. Commander Lucas Von hadn’t been exposed to the gas as long as the others and moaned and wriggled when I picked him up. I placed him on the ground with the rest and cradled his head in my palms.

“Sir!” I said. “Sir! Wake up!”

His eyes fluttered and he mumbled something indistinguishable. 

“Here, take this.” I placed the security bot’s gun on his chest. “Head shots. Like zombies.”

“Basement,” he muttered.

“What?”

He couldn’t get the word out again but gestured like he was placing something over his nose and mouth. Was there something in the basement he needed to breathe?

“I’ll check it out,” I said.

Helping every last person in the foyer would take a long time. And the foyer was just the first floor. Genesis HQ stood as tall as the sky. They probably employed thousands of people. There was no way I could get them all to safety by myself, and I still needed to do what I actually came to do. For that, I needed Commander Lucas Von. So, I forced myself to push forward and give up on rescuing anyone else for the time being. I closed off my mind to thinking about who they were or if they had families waiting at home for them. Still, I kept seeing them as my sisters. Damn sympathy. Yet another human-like condition I could’ve done without.

The basement was a nightmare all its own. Android parts lay strewn about on tables, their bodies splayed open and their mechanical parts removed from their abdomens. That would be me if I succumbed to the recall, laying on a workbench with my eyes wide and my internal workings on display. Those androids may not have been people, but if they were anything like me, they had thoughts, feelings, and memories. Were they scared when they were brought here? Did they know they were being killed?

Unlike their human counterparts, it was too late for me to help any of them.

Along the back wall, a team of engineers had collapsed in front of a set of bright yellow lockers. Red and white stickers covered the front in big block letters, spelling out the word, H-A-Z-M-A-T. That was what Commander Lucas Von sent me for: the workers’ protective hazardous material gear.

A woman in a jumpsuit leaned against the lockers with a pair of bolt cutters in her hands. I yanked them from her grip and pried open the nearest lock. Inside, bags hung from hooks labeled by first and last names: a red one containing a bright yellow hazmat suit, and a blue one containing a gas mask. There were nearly twenty in all.

I pulled the masks out of their bags and placed them one-by-one over the heads of the men and women on the floor. It was easier than dragging them outside and didn’t take as long. As I worked, I made a mental note of sizes to find the best possible fit for Commander Lucas Von. There weren’t enough masks for everyone, and I hated having to selfishly take one with me, but it was them or my sisters. And there was no contest there.

Commander Lucas Von had gotten himself into a sitting position by the time I made it back, and three additional bots lay sprawled on the ground around him. It didn’t look like it’d taken much for them to go down. He was a good shot.

A puddle of vomit painted the cement, but I couldn’t tell if it was his. Some of the others had woken up too. One held her phone in her hands, crying to someone on the other end, and the sound of sirens wailed somewhere in the distance. The police. At that point, I was too confused to know if that was a good or bad thing.

Whether he liked it or not, I assisted Commander Lucas Von onto his feet and propped him up with his crutches. I let him adjust the gas mask onto his own head, but only because I thought he might bite my fingers if I got too close. Fortunately, he was quick about it.

As Commander Lucas Von clicked and clacked toward the elevator, something caught my eye. A young woman lay curled beneath a desk, her arms wrapped around her swollen pregnant belly. I bent down to help but barely had my hands on her when the end of a crutch jabbed me in the ribs.

“You’ve done enough,” Commander Lucas Von said, his voice muffled by the mask and still croaky from the poison.

“It’ll just take a second.”

“If the boys in blue see you, they’ll turn you in. It doesn’t matter how many people you save. You’re an android. Someone else will help her. Let’s go.”

I hated that he was right. Between my hands and the bullet wounds in my torso, there’d be no hiding what I was. Still. “Just this one,” I insisted.

I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he rolled them. “I’ll wait for you on the seventy-fourth floor. If you’re not there in ten minutes, I’m moving on without you.”

I nodded. “See you there.”

Even pregnant, she was light, and I had her outside in no time. Black and white armored police vehicles filled the lot. A fire engine swung its long tail-end into view. One of the Genesis employees shifted onto his elbows as I set the woman down beside him. He spotted my exposed hand and wrinkled his nose. He didn’t ask about the woman, what was happening, or how he ended up outside. His question of choice was a suspicious “What are you doing?” as he backed away.

“You! Stop!” an officer called from a police vehicle.

I raised my hands to show I was unarmed.

“It’s an android!” someone shouted.

“I want to help!” I shouted back.

“Stand up and back away!”

“I need to go back inside.” I shifted my weight toward the broken window.

“Someone shut the damn thing down!”

I turned, and a bullet hit my arm. Another, my leg. I passed through the hole in the wall and felt three pops in my back. Then, something hit my head. Fake blood rushed down my face. My limbs stopped working. Flashes of light flickered over my vision, and the last thing I saw before my eyes went out was the floor.

A scent washed over me from as far back as my memory reached—the rose petal smell of my mother’s perfume.

I hated it worse than the garlicky stench of poison.

She was the last person I wanted to think of as I died.