The house burned to ashes. Bright orange cinders floating in the evening breeze. My sisters lying face-down on the ground. The end of the world, of existence, of everything. Death. Destruction. Pandemonium. Those were the thoughts filling the still functional half of my brain. It was a surprise when I turned onto our block and saw the house still standing. Quiet. Normal. Didn’t anyone know things were supposed to be a disaster?

Thanks to Lucas’s overrides, we sped most of the way there, but the sun had gone down by the time we arrived. It was a school night, so the girls would be in bed. Or they’d better be. If they were alive and up past their bedtime, I was going to give them a piece of my mind. 

The gravel growled under the tires as I pulled up beside the house. Usually, I loved coming home knowing my sisters were there, but I couldn’t help but wish they were with Nana—a wish I never thought I’d have. I craned my neck to see outside. Not a single light shone through the windows. That could mean anything. I didn’t hear any screaming, couldn’t detect any signs of trouble at all, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t out there.

Lucas opened the car door and began the arduous process of getting out, coughing all the way. He’d been coughing almost non-stop since we left Genesis HQ. The poison had done a number on him.

I reached behind the front seat to block him with my arm. “You can’t say anything,” I said.

“Relax. I’m not going to tell your family about the human race’s impending doom.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

His face went blank. Then, he sat up straight. “They still don’t know you’re an android?”

A tense silence answered for me.

“You have to tell them eventually.”

The bright moon glowered at me from the salted sky. “No,” I uttered. “I don’t.”

“Fine.” Resuming the climb onto his good leg, he clocked the hole in my head with his knuckle. “You’re going to have a hard time hiding that forever.”

I rubbed the spot. It didn’t hurt. Not really. Bex had certainly done me a favor by dialing down the pain, but she couldn’t have thrown a patch over it too? Some of that fake blood to make it look real? My hair only hid so much.

I opened the back door of the house and tip-toed inside. The dirty dishes in the sink still had that night’s dinner caked on them. The girls had eaten, and that was usually a good sign of not being dead.

“I’m going to check on them,” I said. “Make yourself at home. My couch is your couch.”

I crept upstairs and nudged open the first door on the right. Instinctively, my attention went to the daybed under the window where Camila slept, but, of course, she wasn’t in it. I picked up the bald baby doll on her pillow and remembered when she’d cut off its hair playing barber. My heart put on a good show of imitating sadness—aching like I’d been kicked in the chest—so I put the toy back to bed. I tried not to think about how much I wanted to see her.

Across the room, Sophia slept soundly in her bed. Although, it was hard to tell. Five different blankets lay piled on top of her, and her pillows were stacked around her head. Selena was the opposite. I found her in our father’s room. A single sheet covered her left leg. The rest of her dangled off the side of the mattress. Mia was tucked in up to her neck with her phone in her hand—still putting herself to sleep with videos. I didn’t like it, but she claimed the light and noise helped with her anxiety.

It was like I never left.

Lucas was sifting through the refrigerator when I came back down. He covered his mouth with his elbow, stifled a cough, and selected a can of soda from the door. “Any monsters hiding under the bed?” he asked as he popped it open.

“Everything looks good up there. Anything down here?”

“No monsters, but the couch you so generously offered is occupied.”

“What?” I walked around the wall separating the kitchen from the living room and there, on the couch, my father lay facing the television. No less than six empty beer bottles littered the floor. Wet drool stains covered his gray t-shirt, and I could smell his breath from across the room. The last time I saw him, I was breaking his nose against the hardwood floor. If my sisters weren’t sound asleep upstairs, I might have screamed.

Someone gasped. The sound startled me, and I scuttled back into the kitchen. Mia stood half-way down the stairs in her pajamas, frozen, shaking, her eyes locked on Lucas. Frantically, I pressed my hair over the hole in my forehead and tucked my hands into my pockets. “It’s okay!” I shout-whispered. “It’s alright. He’s a friend.”

“Mama?” she whispered back. “Why are you sneaking around in the middle of the night with...? Who is this? Don’t tell me you went and got yourself a sugar daddy. I know money’s tight but sheesh.”

“Pft. Knock it off.”

“Lucas Von,” Lucas introduced himself and shook her hand.

“Mia,” she said, found my eyes, and mouthed with no subtlety whatsoever, “He’s cute!”

“Knock it off,” I stressed. “What is Dad doing here?”

“He showed up yesterday. Said he needed to talk to you but wouldn’t say why. I tried to tell you, but you hung up on me. What happened to your phone, anyway? I’ve been trying to call you back, but the thing keeps saying you’re out of service.” She flinched. “Oh my God, is that blood on your pants?”

I glanced down at the red stains. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the sweatshirt had been but still noticeable. “No,” I said. “It’s just paint. From the garage.”

“They hired you back?”

“Yeah, didn’t I tell you?”

Her jaw dropped, and she ran to hug me. I had to stop myself from hugging her back and revealing my hands.

“Chance!” she wailed. “That’s so great!”

“Thanks. Listen, Mia, this is important. Has anything weird happened today?”

She backed up. “Weird?”

“Weird, or scary, or out of place. Anything like that?”

“Aside from you being AWOL again? No.”

“You haven’t seen any of those new metal bots around or anything?”

Her head snapped to the side. “That was really specific. What’s going on?”

“I work for Genesis,” Lucas lied. Or was he lying? I still didn’t understand his deal. “A malfunctioning security bot was seen around here. Chance made the report, and he’s been kind enough to assist me in locating it. It might be dangerous, so it’s important we find it soon.”

“Ugh, I hate Genesis and their dumb bots. So creepy. I’m glad they’re making the human ones illegal. It’s about time. The idea that one of my friends could secretly be a robot really freaks me out. Is there seriously one, like, running amok out there? Shouldn’t they have alerted the public or something?”

I dug my hands farther into my pockets.

“We’re hoping to contain the problem before word gets out,” Lucas said. “People are already unhappy with Genesis about the recall.”

Mia rolled her eyes. She’d never liked politics. Then, rather unexpectedly, she burst out laughing.

“Mama,” she chuckled, “isn’t that your shirt?”

Lucas and I both glanced down at the cartoon dog on his chest. I’d forgotten about that. I ran through my brain’s database of excuses but took too long. If I tried to explain, she’d know I was lying.

“Don’t worry about things that aren’t your business,” I side-stepped. “You should go to bed. You’re going to be miserable in the morning for school.”

“You’re one to talk. You made a big show out of going back to school but then you blow it playing hooky all the time. And for what? So you can run around with some rando? Not exactly being a great role model.”

“I’m going too. We all need sleep. Lucas, you can take my bed. I’ll crash on the floor or something.”

“What? Genesis Robotics can’t afford a hotel room for its employees?” Mia quipped.

“Go.”

“I’m going. Just keep your new friend away from my room.”

Once her door shut, I relaxed and peeled my hands free. “Sorry about her.”

“She didn’t bother me. Can’t say the same for our missing bot.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? What happened?”

“Blaise must be dead. There’d be no reason for his bots to obey his orders with him out of commission. Good work.” He punched my shoulder. “But you’re right about us needing sleep. Or, at least, right about me needing sleep. I don’t know how you work.”

A sinking feeling plunged into my core. Blaise must be dead? God. Had I killed someone? I took a deep breath to calm myself. It would be alright. I did it to protect my sisters.

I did it to protect my sisters.

I bobbed my head and gestured for him to follow. We were only up the first few steps when I paused to say, “I might actually be in the market for a sugar daddy though if you’re interested.”

“Shut up,” he scoffed.

I got him situated in my room and invited him to go through my drawers for something comfortable to wear. He already knew the only thing in my life worth keeping a secret, so there wasn’t any danger in letting him root around in my things. While he did that, I went to the bathroom to clean myself up.

My naked reflection in the mirror unsettled me. I hadn’t worn my hair down since middle school, and when I pushed it up, the hole in my head made me shudder. There were identical marks on my torso, most of them wet, sticky, and red. Thirteen in all when I counted. More than I thought. But none of it compared to the destruction of my hands. I barely even recognized the mechanical black hooks as my own. How many different functions had I lost due to the damage? And when would I start to notice?

The bottom of the tub went red under the shower water, and a weird popping feeling tickled my hands. I held them out of the stream to mitigate the sensation and scrubbed the gunk from my skin. Once clean, I dried off with a dark-colored towel, just in case I’d missed any.

The first aid kit under the sink was full of cartoon-themed bandages (and someone had filled the alcohol container with glitter), but I found some large white-skin-colored adhesives near the bottom. Sophia and Selena used to wear them on their heels when they tried soccer a few years back. I stuck one over the top of the hole in my head, a few more on the still-leaking wounds in my chest, and called it good. I could say I’d hurt myself on something at the garage since I’d already lied about working there again.

That taken care of, I threw on a pair of plaid pajama pants and a white long-sleeve shirt. The shirt covered my torso and forearms, but my hands would be trickier. In the downstairs closet, on the top shelf, I slid out the bin of miscellaneous clothes and dug until I found a pair of leather gloves. I couldn’t come up with a convenient story to tell about why I was wearing them, but almost anything would be more believable than the truth. It would have to do.

Back upstairs, Lucas sat perched on the edge of the bed, dressed in a pair of black sweats and a white undershirt. He rubbed his bum leg and winced as his hands reached the top of his thigh. An orange medicine container lay on the sheets beside him.

“You okay?” I asked.