“I wanna be rich,” Mila said out of the blue.

They were both fourteen, sitting outside a convenience store that sometimes took pity on them and gave them expired snacks. Mila was throwing a blue rubber ball at the brick wall, a cycle of throwing and catching and throwing again. Taejoon was sitting behind her, occasionally catching the ball if it bounced past her, but mostly focused on the book he had stolen from their previous foster parents’ house.

They would be moving to yet another foster home tomorrow—their social worker had let them outside today to play, clearly sick of seeing their faces so many times in the past six months. It certainly wouldn’t be the last time, either, but that was left unsaid.

He looked up at her words, eyebrows raising as she threw the ball and it nearly hit her in the face when she tried to catch it.

“How are you going to become rich?” He asked, and she cocked her head to the side, thinking for a moment. Her black nail polish was chipped in several places, in desperate need of a redo, but she had wasted the last of her polish on painting the nails of his pinky and ring fingers when he was asleep.

He thought about stealing some more from the convenience store, but didn’t want to risk their only consistent supply of snacks shunting them out.

Finally, Mila threw her ball again. “I dunno. Maybe get fostered by a rich family and steal from them.”

“A rich family? Where?” Taejoon snorted. They lived in a very poor area, and the families they were fostered to weren’t much better off.

“Maybe we could hop onto a ship to Psamathe,” Mila said. She threw the ball and it bounced right over her shoulder, directly into Taejoon’s lap. “Everybody’s rich there.”

“We’d just get sent right back.”

“I think you’d fit in with rich people,” Mila said, approaching him and nudging his knee with her sneaker. “You look kind of snooty.”

Taejoon rolled his eyes and picked up the ball, tossing it over her head. She jumped up and caught it, smirking at his failed attempt at throwing it elsewhere.

“I wouldn’t fit in on Psamathe. Maybe you can take the kid off the streets, but you’ll never take the street out of the kid.”

“You sound so fucking lame. And corny.”

“Shut up.”

-

-

-

The hard-drive was easy to get into—as in, it didn’t have a lot of security. But there did seem to be an endless amount of useless code that would take forever to work through, and it would take a little longer than he thought to undo it all.

He left it alone for a couple of days in case Silva noticed that the hard-drive was missing, but he didn’t, going about his work and even telling the staff he’d be away for another business trip next month. He was less worried about Irina—she hadn’t noticed he’d been using her laptop this whole time, and was a bit of a ditz when it came to technology anyways.

But aside from that, Taejoon was once again uncomfortable.

The whole house acted as if nothing had happened the other day. Not Kishou, not Octavio, and not any of the staff. Not that there were many to begin with—Irina, Delilah, another driver he hadn’t met yet, two other maids and a gardner, all female, were the only staff present, which was a rather low number of staff for the amount of money Kishou made. Not that Taejoon was suddenly an expert on such things, but being in the presence of more rich families in this past month than he had in a lifetime was enough to clue him in on some aspects of this.

Kishou’s staff was all-female, unlike other families, who had an even mix of male and female workers, and Taejoon didn’t know the reason. He knew the reason for a lot of things in this house—why the layout was this way or why they ate certain things on certain days—because of the information that had been programmed into him, but he wasn’t able to pinpoint why the low number of staff and why they were all female.

He hadn’t even met everyone in the house yet—aside from the driver he had yet to see, he was aware that Kishou had a wife who was out on some vacation, and a secretary who occasionally came to visit for conference calls made at home. He wondered if either of them were aware of what happened to Octavio, if that was a one-time occurence or not.
 
(It probably wasn’t.)

It made him uncomfortable, and he wanted to say something about it, but was prevented from doing so. He wondered what kind of person programmed a robot to protect someone from everyone but their own family. If he had been told to do that back when he and Mila still worked in IT, he would have reported it to the police.

Taejoon did try checking up on Octavio more frequently, but was always shoved away or scoffed at. He was stuck at a weird point; he wanted to be frustrated with Octavio for not allowing him to do his job, but he was incapable of truly being mad at him, and he didn’t even want to do this job at all. He just wanted to be free of this programming, to set all of this aside and go home with his own free will.

(If he even had a home to return to.)

He was doing just this—trying to undo his programming with that hard-drive—when he sensed someone not far from him. Taejoon quickly pulled the hard-drive out and closed everything down on the laptop, leaving behind no trace of his presence. He got to his feet quickly and stood silently in front of the wall, completely still in case the person nearby discovered him. He’d only slept a couple of times (if you could even call it that), and he feigned this now, closing his eyes and pressing his back flat against the white wall behind him.

The person moved quietly through the house, purposely stepping on the edges of floorboards to avoid creaking them, and Taejoon peeked one eye open, wondering who was up this late at night. To his surprise it was Octavio, a motorcycle helmet tucked under his arm and wearing a leather jacket. Before he could restrain himself he blurted out “Where are you going?” and Octavio hissed under his breath, throwing a look his way.

“None of your business,” Octavio said, somewhat scathingly. Despite his avoidance of mentioning the subject, Taejoon realized the other was still thinking about the other day. Guilt flooded him, but he shoved it down.

“It is,” Taejoon responded steadily. If Octavio was sneaking out, something inside him wouldn’t let him get away with it—and he felt obligated to make sure he was safe after that whole fiasco.

“What’re you gonna do? Stop me?” Octavio asked, and kept walking. Taejoon followed, somewhat curious about what the son of a CEO got up to when he thought no one was looking.
Octavio shot him another look. “What are you doing?”

“Following you.”

“Well, I forbid you from touching me.”

They made their way down the large, grand staircase that connected the first and ground floors, a good foot apart because Taejoon was prevented from getting too close to him, but was still able to follow him. They avoided the front door and instead went to the large back door that would lead them to the garage, which Taejoon had only been inside of once.

Octavio paused before it, craning his neck up to look at a white device clipped to the top, a green light blinking. An alarm.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, and Taejoon closed his eyes. He couldn’t believe he was about to do this, and he wasn’t sure if he would even be able to, but...

He was connected to the house; he could disable the alarm, but that would in turn ring another alarm directly in Kishou’s room...no matter, he could disable that one as well...but only temporarily.

Surprisingly, he was allowed to do it. He wondered if it was because he was linked to the security network, being Octavio’s bodyguard. With a feeble electric noise, the light above them stopped blinking before turning blue.
Octavio looked confused, and cautiously reached out his hand, twisting the doorknob and pulling the door open. Nothing happened.

He looked back at Taejoon.

“Did you...?”

“Yeah,” Taejoon said. He wasn’t able to lie.

Octavio squinted at him, as if searching for ulterior motives. Not that Taejoon could have any—at least, in Octavio’s eyes, he was nothing more than a robot. And yet the other man seemed to decide something, stepping out into the garage cautiously and telling him, “You can come, if you want.”

If you want.

A strange choice of words—and the only choice he had been given to make since living again. Everything else had been an order, a command, a simple adherence to his programming. But this was clearly an open-ended command. He could go, or he could stay. He didn’t have to do one or the other.

It was a strange sensation, feeling so much relief at the simplest, smallest thing such as getting to make his own decision for himself. It was dumb, and yet he felt human again.

“I’ll go,” he said, and the other man ushered him out into the garage before slamming the door shut behind them.

Octavio walked right past the motorbike Taejoon had repaired weeks ago, grabbing at a tarp and pulling on it with all his might, unveiling a sleek, shiny green motorcycle with stenciled letters on the side, a shortened version of his name—OCT.

“This is my baby,” Octavio crooned, putting his helmet on so Taejoon could no longer see his expression. He patted the plush seat, swinging a leg over it, which was kind of comical to watch with his short stature. Taejoon probably wouldn’t have looked much better if he sat on this bike in his previous life, but as it stood now, he was a couple inches taller than he was previously. Probably to make him more intimidating, since he was supposed to be a bodyguard.

He suddenly realized Octavio was waiting for him to sit on the bike too, if his fingers tapping against the handles impatiently meant anything, and Taejoon approached, but stopped short of getting on. He was physically unable to.

“You can touch me,” Octavio said, who seemed to have worked out that Taejoon was unable to disobey most of his commands.

Taejoon sat behind Octavio, feeling a little awkward due to the position. He didn’t want to touch the other’s waist or press up against his back, so he planted his hands firmly on the seat, gripping it hard. This was fine. This would work.

“Dude,” Octavio said. “I don’t know how to repair robots, man. If you fall off and break, I don’t know what my dad’s going to do to me.”

He said it in a lighthearted way, but Taejoon flinched internally and raised his hands to grip Octavio’s hips, and, still feeling insecure about that position, moved to slide his arms around his waist. This was awkward, but at least Taejoon wouldn’t fly off. Probably.

“What if your father hears you leaving?” Taejoon was able to ask by tricking himself into thinking that it was a matter of safety. Well, it technically was...

“He won’t. I do this all the time.” Octavio’s voice had a tinge of humor in it, as if the memory was funny. “He only found out I was sneaking out the other day because he came home as soon as I came back.”

His motorcycle came to life, revving loudly in the air, and Taejoon flinched again. They suddenly shot forward, way too fast to be a safe starting speed, and he pressed against Octavio’s back more tightly, feeling the leather of his jacket against his cheek.

Octavio had not provided him a helmet—maybe he had assumed it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but Taejoon’s eyes were watering against the harsh wind as they sped down the road, past the gates that had been left open by someone careless—or perhaps purposely left open by Octavio.

Well, to be specific, only his left eye was watering. His right eye seemed fine, and he wondered if it was cybernetic. He had a vague memory of his glasses shattering and piercing his pupil...when he had been “rebuilt”, did they replace his eye? Was it certain now that half of him was real and the other half was robotic? Where did the human part of him begin and end?

He didn’t want to think about that right now.

They didn’t drive for too long—they got to their destination quickly because there was little to no traffic this late, Taejoon occasionally checking certain highways with his network at Octavio’s request to see which had the least amount of other people on it so they could speed by.

They arrived at a dirt track, lit on all sides by stadium lights with bleachers rising high in the air. Taejoon watched a pair of beaten-up pick-up trucks race each other round and round with interest as Octavio approached, having never seen drag-racing up close. Their tires kicked up dirt and dust into the air, forming beige clouds that made visibility hard, but the crowd seemed to love it anyways, cheering and whooping for the car they wanted to win.

The two did not park in the gravelly parking lot with the rest of the spectators’ cars, instead taking a different, more direct route to a line of other motorcycles and cars with their owners hanging around, talking to one another and laughing.

“You’re not going to race, are you?” Taejoon asked, framing it from a concerned point of view once again. He was getting much easier at speaking freely even if questions weren’t directed at him, so long as he pretended that it was for the safety of Octavio.

“Oh, I am. I do this every week.”

Octavio kicked the stand down and pried Taejoon’s arms off of him, dismounting with ease. Taejoon slid off with a little more difficulty than the other man had, having never ridden one of these things before. Octavio was gone in the blink of an eye, talking to a much older gentleman near the gate to the track.

Taejoon approached them both, sweeping the area and looking for anything particularly dangerous. A quick scan told him all of these vehicles had plenty of fuel and weren’t likely to blow a fuse anytime soon, and that none of the people around him were carrying weapons save for a guard with a Swiss Army knife in his back pocket. Deeming him not a threat, he tuned in to what Octavio and the gentleman were discussing, listening to their conversation.

“Almost took you off the roster, it took you so long,” the gentleman was huffing around his beard, flipping the pages on his clipboard.

“But I’m here now! Pretty please?” Octavio whined, digging his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, where Taejoon knew he had wads of cash prepared to use as a bribe. 

The older man crossed his arms, giving Octavio an up-and-down look, before his shoulders slumped and he gave in.

“I guess.”

Octavio let out a loud noise of excitement, pumping his fist, but the man was quick to add,

“The next time you’re this late, you’ll have to race against Big Jim.”

“But he’s slow,” Octavio complained,  letting his hand drop to his side.

“Yeah, well, can’t have the others claim I’m playing favorites, Silva.”

“‘Favorites’? You’re so unfair to me.”

The old man guffawed, before tilting his head up at Taejoon and asking, “New boyfriend?”

“I’m his bodyguard,” Taejoon said. The man’s eyebrows furrowed, shooting Octavio a look.

“Does he speak English?” He asked.

“Dunno yet,” Octavio shrugged. “He’s a robot.”

Taejoon frowned. What were they talking about?...

“Anyways, thanks, amigo. I owe you one.” Octavio shot the man finger guns before leading Taejoon somewhere else while he pondered just what had happened. It came to him when Octavio stopped outside a food stand, looking up at the menu and saying aloud,

“Don’t suppose you can eat, can you?”

With a little jolt Taejoon realized that for the past month he had been speaking Spanish without realizing it. He had always been able to process Octavio, Kishou, and everyone else’s words, so he had assumed that they were speaking English, because he highly doubted that they were speaking Korean. 

But after having witnessed Octavio switch from Spanish to English and back to Spanish, and realizing that they were both different languages despite Taejoon being able to understand both of them, he wondered if he could now just understand and speak all languages. He hadn’t known a lick of Spanish before, but had apparently been speaking it consistently for the past month without realizing. If he could speak all languages, he wasn’t sure how to switch between them, because he had evidently responded to that man in Spanish.

All that aside, he was now being presented with a dilemma: the part inside of him that wanted to say honestly no, I can not eat, and the part of him that was desperate to taste things again. If he could smell he could most certainly taste, and though he might not feel hunger, he wanted to enjoy something as simple as the taste of a corndog again.

(Could he even swallow it?

Where would the food go...?)

“No,” he finally said, and Octavio laughed.

“I knew that. I don’t know why I asked.”

The night passed with a mixture of mounting anxiety and excitement as he waited for Octavio’s turn on the tracks. The man had pretty much left him behind, gripping the guardrails tightly and yelling at certain people or hyping them up, clearly having a lot of fun.

Taejoon had never seen him like this—he was somewhat more reserved at home, avoiding everyone else in the house so he could play video games in his room, doing everything but study for the school his father was trying to get him into for business. Sure, Octavio was hyperactive and impatient in the form of constant movement, but not like this.

Here, free of whatever restraints that had kept him quiet at home, he screamed. He yelled obnoxiously, bumped elbows with others and loudly discussed the mechanics of his bike to anybody who would listen, and in a crowd full of people with the same interests as him, the number of people willing to listen to him was high. He clearly knew many people here, and it made Taejoon miss home—the convenience store, Mila, Mystik, hell, even his social worker.

Taejoon envied the other’s freedom to do this, to have an outlet where he could be unabashedly him, to do what he wanted and talk to people about things he wanted to talk about.

Taejoon didn’t have that luxury. Not anymore.

His mood soured over this fact—not towards Octavio personally, but towards the event as a whole. When it was finally Octavio’s turn to race against a woman with dark hair fluttering from beneath her motorcycle helmet, Taejoon ran an analysis on who the likely winner would be. He hadn’t seen either of them race yet, so there was a lot up in the air, but their motorcycles seemed evenly matched in power. Octavio could use a little more fuel, but if it was only the one race, he should be fine.

The crowd whooped as the race started, and Taejoon wished he could step away from the rowdiness of it all, but he was unable to. It was like there was a hook where his navel should be, keeping him firmly planted there, and it made him somewhat nauseous to move away. Or, as nauseous as he could feel when he was at least part robot. 

(God, he had to figure this all out someday...)

He raised his eyes to the pitch-black sky, no stars in sight. He missed his hometown, where he could at least see a couple twinkling out if Mila made him stay up late enough.

(“Maybe we could hop on a ship to Psamathe,” Mila’s voice echoed in his head.

Psamathe wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.)

Taejoon returned his attention to Octavio, who was nothing more than a green blur on the dirt tracks. The races seemed to be set up so that the first to complete five laps and cross the finish line would be the winner—he hadn’t been paying attention and lost track of the laps, but it seemed that Octavio and the woman were neck-and-neck. 

The woman was leaned forward, feet tucked in securely and arms steady on the handles of her bike. Octavio’s feet were closer to the ground, in danger of dragging. He was leaned forward as well, but his arms weren’t as steady whenever he made turns. The difference in their postures spoke to their experience—Taejoon couldn't imagine that Octavio had had many chances to ride like this.

The crowd whooped every time they sped by during their laps, and he realized that the older gentleman from before was holding up his fingers, counting the laps. That was the fourth lap, which meant they would be on their final one now.

Taejoon watched the two, trying to predict who would be the first to finish judging by their speed, but Octavio did something unexpected—he took an extremely sharp turn at a curve, evidently trying to get himself at least a brief second ahead of the woman, but it was too sudden, and he crashed to the ground. He rolled onto the dirt, the visor of his helmet cracking open while his bike skidded off of the track, thankfully out of the way of the spectators, towards the forest that surrounded one side of the track.

Taejoon was halfway there before he knew it, the crowd going ‘awww’ at the sight of the other laying in the dirt, chest heaving. His feet had carried him forward, aided by programming as he internally searched for the nearest hospital in case he needed one. He knelt beside Octavio, reaching a hand out to see if he was still conscious, but his charge suddenly sat up, laughing.

“Oh man,” he giggled, and took his helmet off, revealing a bloody nose and a small cut over his left eye where his visor had cracked. “That was awesome.”

Taejoon tilted the other’s face towards him, trying to get a good look at his eyes under the bright stadium lights to see if he had a concussion, but someone was suddenly shoving him away, and he looked to see that a man with a large red cross on shirt was tending to Octavio.

He felt a surge of protectiveness overcome him—he was supposed to be looking after Octavio, not this random person—but it faded away as quickly as it came when he realized what he’d been thinking. Sighing internally, he watched the woman Octavio had been racing against approach them, her helmet braced against her hip with one arm.

“Krass, kid, that was something else,” she said in lightly-accented English. Now that Taejoon was able to discern when people were speaking different languages, it was a little jarring to hear others speak now.

“You think so?” Octavio asked excitedly, before jerking his head away from the medic, who was trying to shine a light into his eyes. “I’m fine, compadre. Hey—er—whatever your name is, did you film that? Can you film things?”

Taejoon realized that Octavio was referring to him when his head swiveled, grinning at him unexpectedly, lips and teeth stained red from his nosebleed.

Did he not have a name? Not even a fake one, or a serial number, or whatever? Or had Octavio just simply never bothered to learn if he had one? Why didn’t Taejoon know if he had a name? He couldn’t say his own name—he was once again prevented from doing so—but he did have one, right? Didn’t he?

“I can’t film things,” he answered, because he was prompted to, but he was still reeling from being referred to that way. He shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but it was still a blow somewhat that he didn’t even have some sort of title to be known as. 

Why should you? You’re not human anymore.

The woman helped Octavio to his feet and they talked some more, Taejoon trailing behind, still thinking about it. He wished he hadn’t tagged along now, had stayed at home and worked through that hard-drive so he could grab Octavio by the collar of his dirtied leather jacket and tell him I have a name and it is Taejoon Park.
 
But he couldn’t do that. He had decided to come along for some stupid reason, like feeling human again. If that even meant anything anymore.

He was still thinking about it by the time Octavio pulled him onto his bike, beaten-up and in an unsure state, but still driveable. He wrapped his arms around the other’s waist and realized just how small the other was compared to him—thin, short, barely older than a teenager. Taejoon could crush him, if he wanted to, in this new form. 

He wished he could. He wished he didn’t feel so obligated, so forced, to like the other.

He felt even more inhuman at these thoughts. His body had already been changed enough, taller and stronger and metal, and he didn’t want to be reminded of it while touching the other. But the difference was jarring. Taejoon knew that in his previous body, he would have been closer to Octavio in height—not quite as short, but not this tall, either. And certainly not this strong.

His hands tightened on the other’s body, feeling ribs that had been bruised not too long ago, feeling the steady rise and fall of his chest that Taejoon could not replicate. Octavio was too easy to break.

An electric shock tingled throughout his body, painful enough to make him grunt, mind going blank and white from the pain. He wondered if it was some sort of internal response to the sudden increase of negative thoughts about Octavio, because while he couldn’t outright dislike the other, he was apparently capable of thinking about hurting him. That scared him, somewhat. He wouldn’t be any better than Kishou if he did that, so he tried shoving all of those thoughts to the back of his mind, and focused instead on the rushing wind in his hair and against his face.

They arrived at the house and Taejoon bypassed the security for Octavio again, but forcibly made his way into the other’s bathroom to pull out the hydrogen peroxide and a couple of Bandaids. Octavio let him tend to him, perhaps too tired to protest, because it was four in the morning and the night had been eventful for him. Taejoon wondered if this was where the bandage on the other’s hip had come from and that scar on his cheek—racing. Once a week. He wondered how he had never noticed before.

He placed his hand on the other’s jaw to prevent him from jerking away and shoved his lamp light right in front of his face to see how his pupils would dilate. Normal—no concussion, then. Octavio shoved him away with a “what gives?”, before flopping down onto the bed, getting it dirty from his filthy hair and dust-stained skin. At least the leather jacket was discarded on the floor, but it was still disgusting.

“Take a shower,” Taejoon was prompted to say, putting away the bandaids and closing the bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

“Make me,” Octavio said, eyes still closed.

A wrong choice of words—Taejoon, in need of venting out some of his frustrations, stomped to the other’s bathroom, turning the knob and starting the powerful spray from the showerhead. He missed taking showers too—the relaxing feeling of water running down his back, of washing his hair. Octavio didn’t realize how lucky he was to even have the ability to take a shower without short-circuiting.

(Well, he didn’t know if he would short-circuit. He was too afraid to try.)

He yanked the shower curtain open before making his way back to Octavio, who hadn’t realized what was going on yet.

Taejoon picked Octavio up easily, earning him an indignant and tired yelp.

“Hey, what gives-?”

He carried the other to the bathroom and dumped him right into the bathtub, who thrashed about, eyes wide open now as the spray of water soaked through his dirt-stained clothes.

“What the fuck?!” He yelled, trying to scramble to his feet, but he clumsily slid against the bathtub and fell back down onto his elbows. “Are you fucking broken?”

“Take a shower,” Taejoon repeated, and Octavio glared up at him, his sopping wet hair getting into his eyes, now. He was ordered to get out, but no sooner had his back turned did Octavio’s soaking wet shirt hit the back of his head. With a sigh he closed the door behind him and discarded Octavio’s dirty shirt into the laundry basket, deciding that that was Irina’s problem.

He felt no obligation to stay, so he made his way back downstairs, checking the clock. It was about four-thirty...He had an hour and a half to start working on this hard-drive and at least disable some of the things within it before Irina and the others woke up to start the day.

Sitting back down at the laptop, he plugged the hard-drive back in, fingers flying across the keyboard with ease as he worked his way through the unnecessary amount of code inside. Nothing particularly new or interesting yet, just an endless string of numbers and letters to make his life harder than it already was.

Soon, the rays of the sun were beginning to peek out over the pristine white gate that shielded the Silva estate from the rest of the world, shining through the large windows in the sitting room that Taejoon sat in. He had maybe fifteen minutes til the others woke up, and he had hardly made a dent in the thing’s security. He was about to turn it off, save it for another day, when the screen flashed green and several pop-ups appeared.

Squinting at all the new information before him, he realized that it was every single command programmed into him, mixed with all the information on the people in Kishou and Octavio’s lives, the database consisting mostly of employees, distant family members and close friends.

Most interestingly, however, was the title of the files listed inside: Project/Crypto.