A red exit sign pointed us in the direction of the stairs. It took some effort for Commander Lucas Von to get up the steps—too much effort for my nerves to hold out. I had a bad feeling and didn’t want to wait. Albeit unsure what I planned to do when I got there, I ran to the next floor without him, emerging onto an open floor plan, an office on every corner.

The largest office wore the label Richard Cussons on the door in shiny gold letters. I flung it open and stepped into a massive executive space overlooking the city. Blue and red lights from emergency vehicles below flickered in the windows. The cloudy skies cast a dark shadow over the room. Partially blocked by a privacy screen and elevated to give a sense of authority, a massive black desk towered. On it, a man’s bloody head.

He wore a gas mask, but it was mostly in pieces, the straps dislodged by a chunk of his skull. His back hunched over the side of the desk, and his arms dangled down to his feet. I turned my eyes away and choked back vomit.

Above him stood another man, armed with a handgun like the one Commander Lucas Von was trudging around with—the one I should have grabbed from him as I passed. His curly blond hair stuck out in odd directions under the straps of his gas mask. I held my empty hands up in surrender but couldn’t get a word out.

“Dad!” Bex burst through the door. “Did you get the codes?”

“Of course I did, sweetheart. Who’s this?”

“New friend,” she said exactly as I had to Commander Lucas Von minutes before.

He pointed to me. “I recognize you. Chauncy, right?”

I hated the friendliness of his voice.

“Chance,” Bex corrected.

“Chance. How’s your mom? Oh, sorry! The mask.” He switched the gun into his left hand and held his right out for me to shake. “I’m—”

“Howard Blaise,” Commander Lucas Von said.

“Von! There you are. Good work, Bex.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a loving shake. “How’d you find him?”

“I had a little help.” She eyed me.

“Wait, you’re Howard Blaise’s daughter?” I blurted.

“In the flesh—so to speak.”

“Right,” Blaise interjected. “Let’s not beat around the bush.”

My limbs reacted before my brain knew what was happening. A bullet struck the far wall behind Commander Lucas Von, and landed on top of him on the floor.

“Get off!” he snapped.

“You shouldn’t be helping him, Chance,” Howard Blaise said. “I don’t know what he’s told you to get you on his side, but he’s not your friend. He’d see you terminated in a heartbeat.”

“Yeah, well, you know what they say about the ‘devil you know,’” I replied.

I pushed up on my hands and knees to make room for Commander Lucas Von to roll away. He aimed and fired a shot back at Howard Blaise. The bullet broke through the window, leaving a shatter hole behind dangerously close to Bex’s head. A few inches down and he might have accidentally killed her.

“Stop it!” I barked.

“Stop what? They’re trying to kill me!” Commander Lucas Von barked back. “Blaise is the one who shot me out of the sky. Him and his army of bots.” There was fear in his eyes. Raw and animalistic. Like a rabbit in the presence of a fox. “This has to end here.” He aimed to fire again, but when he pulled the trigger, he was met with a click.

The empty gun clattered against the floor as he army-crawled behind a multi-tiered display table.

“They shouldn’t have tried to take my daughter away from me,” Howard Blaise said, more to space than either of us. “I thought you’d be on my side, Von. You know how much my family means to me.”

“So, what’s the plan, Blaise?” Commander Lucas Von asked. “Going to murder all the humans on the planet?”

“It’s funny you’re so concerned with murder when it’s humans, but you couldn’t care less when it’s androids. When it’s Bex.”

“For God’s sake, Blaise, I don’t want your android to be shut down. I don’t want anyone to die. Maybe we can fight the recall. There has to be something we can do.”

“There is. And I’m doing it.”

He shot blindly at the table. A framed certificate exploded and knocked over a glass globe, but Commander Lucas Von remained out of sight.

Back on my feet with my arms spread wide, I turned my body into a shield between the two of them.

“Stop!” I barked again.

Blaise inhaled a breath through his mask as if preparing to speak, but Bex cut him off.

“It’s okay, Chance,” she said. “You don’t have to protect him anymore. Your time protecting humans is over. You’re with us now. We’ll take care of you. It’s time for you to rest.”

“What are you planning to do?” I asked. “Is it true? Are you going to wipe out humanity like some kind of freaking supervillain?”

“Don’t be so dramatic. We’re not going to hurt anyone we don’t have to. We aren’t like them. We’re better than them. We don’t have to stoop to their level.” She waved her hand to beckon me. “Come on. Come with me. I’ll get you fixed up. You don’t have to be a part of this.”

There was some appeal in the idea of standing aside and letting it end. After all, isn’t that what I planned to do at the lake house? Now, I had the chance to not die. I could find a new place with other androids who were like me. It was an entirely new world to explore, an opportunity unlike any other. I could fit in. Start fresh.

I grabbed the edge of the table and dragged it from over Commander Lucas Von’s head. He protested, but there was nothing he could do.

“Good,” Blaise said. “Now get out of the way.”

As much as I might have liked to lay down and call it quits—because, hell, I was exhausted—the fact remained: I had more humans to worry about than Commander Lucas Von. There was no rest for Mama.

What worked the first time with the security bot worked again with Howard Blaise. But instead of hitting him with my car, I smashed Blaise into the window with the table. He fell backward. His body slid under the table legs, and its narrow edge pinned him against the glass by his throat. I leaned across, stretched my arm to its limit, and tore the gas mask clean off his face. Let him have a taste of his own medicine. 

Bex ran to help him, and while the two of them were occupied, I threw Commander Lucas Von over my shoulders, snatched up his crutches, and ran like hell.

“I’m getting really sick of carrying you,” I said.

I found my way back to the stairs and raced down three floors. As I rounded a corner down the fourth, Bex landed in front of me. She fell like a skydiver into a wide stance and held her arms out to keep her balance. A drop like that would have snapped the legs of any human.

“Give me the mask!” she demanded.

Holding it tucked between my palm and Commander Lucas Von’s crutches, I shifted to keep it out of reach behind my leg.

“You wouldn’t do this, Chance.” Her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t let my dad die. Would you?”

I shifted again, this time to get Commander Lucas Von on his feet. He leaned into me for support.

“He shouldn’t have pumped the building full of poison,” I replied. “Do you have any idea how many people he might have killed?”

“Do you have any idea how many androids they’ve killed?”

The image of the bodies in the basement crossed my mind, but it was no more horrifying than the image of the pregnant woman on the floor. “Just get out of here,” I said. “Go help him.”

“I will. Right after you give me the mask.”

The sound of voices carried up the stairs. The rescue teams had arrived. Among them, the police. They wouldn’t be too happy to find Richard Cussons dead at his desk, but at least they wouldn’t have to go far to find the culprits.

“You’d better get going,” I warned her.

I could tell by the look in her eye she was thinking the same thing. But she didn’t move. Not right away. We stood our ground until the rescuers were practically on top of us.

“If they see you, they’ll turn you in to the recall,” she said. “You could still come with me.”

“No,” I answered. “I can’t.”

I could have sworn she gave me a subtle nod of understanding. Like she knew why I had to do what I’d done. Or maybe not. Either way, we gave each other a wide berth as she made her way past and up the first flight of steps. Once clear of us, she burst into a sprint and vanished as quickly as she came.

“She’s right,” Commander Lucas Von said. “If they catch us, you’re done for.” He stripped his sweater off and revealed the embarrassing dog t-shirt underneath. “Here. Get rid of that mess.”

I pulled off the gore-covered swiss cheese of the sweatshirt and replaced it with the sweater, conveniently covering the damage to my torso. He then combed my hair down with his fingers until it covered the hole in my head. “Put your hands in your pockets,” he instructed and put Howard Blaise’s gas mask over my face. Good as human.

“Hey, you!” someone yelled at us the instant Commander Lucas Von finished tightening the straps. Five men in uniform came tearing up the stairs, all of them in gas masks, one carrying an ax. “What are you doing? Are you two alright?”

“We’re fine,” Commander Lucas Von lied.

“You shouldn’t be in here.” Someone placed a comforting hand on my arm while someone else looked me up and down for signs of injury. If only they knew.

“We heard gunshots,” I explained. “We wanted to make sure everyone was alright.”

“We’ll check it out. You get moving. The paramedics are waiting outside.”

Commander Lucas Von carefully descended the stairs on his crutches. I hovered behind, ready to scoop him up if I had to. I didn’t want to be anywhere near the seventy-fifth floor when they found Richard Cussons.

“That was close,” I pointed out.

“This place is probably swarming with them by now.”

“What should we do?”

“We need to get out of here.”

I stopped cold. “But my family.”

“We can’t help them from here anymore,” he said. “Not with the boys in blue crawling around. And we’re well outside of our two-hour window anyway. That security bot’s already at your house. There’s nothing left to do except hope for the best. We’ll get there as fast as we can. Fingers crossed, your family is okay.”

“What about contacting your command?”

“I’ve still got that radio. You got a spot at home I can set it up?”

“Yes, sir. I do.”

“Ugh, don’t do that anymore.” He swatted my arm with the back of his hand. “Just call me Lucas.”