It takes a long time to reconnect with reality when he wakes up because Zef earnestly didn't expect he would.

The room he's in isn't recognizably anything. It looks both clean and like the carapace of a mechanical bug. Tech and instruments—half medical, half torture chamber—pile up on a table and cart nearby. Corrugated sheet metal makes up the walls, but they're absent of rust and everything smells like bleach.

Adrenaline shoots him upright, only two things prevent it. The first is that he's strapped there under a layer of starchy sheets. The second is— Oh, yeah. He took a fist through the chest. Pain shoots through him in an ungentle reminder. He groans, lays back down, but the strain of his aborted attempt to move makes pain come in waves, mounting in pressure. Nausea spirals hot and soupy in his guts.

"Hey, hey, easy," says a voice, both strange and familiar. It's velvety smooth and deep. Deeper than when Zef last heard it.

He looks to the side and sees Dee. Only, not Dee. The pronouns that come up on his HUD have changed from she/her to he/him. Still tall and sharp-jawed with a shaved design on the side of his head, but very notably—

A man.

Both in the sense that Dee changed his pronouns and, physically, became a separate entity from the person Zef met in the industrial quarter. His shoulders are broad and muscular, his hips absent of the curves that had been there before, and his face?

Like he goddamn shapeshifted overnight.

Zef is jealous and confused and still in a lot of pain.

He is also not eloquent enough to say more than, "What the fuck?"

"You can say that again," Dee agrees.

"I thought I died."

"You did. Sort of. A hundred years ago there'd have been no saving you. The wonders of technology, innit? Got to you just in time, but you were, like—" He holds his fingers millimetres apart. "—this close." He rolls closer on a wheelie chair and shoves a thermometer in Zef's mouth. Sticks his fingers under his chin. Some implant Zef doesn't recognize lights up beneath Dee's brown skin with electric blue circuitry.

Zef pats at his chest and winces. It's sore but whole. He speaks around the thermometer. "How did you fix me?"

"Not just anycunt coulda done what I did, but luckily I'm fairly spectacular with tech and medicine," Dee says modestly. He takes the thermometer, examines it and nods, satisfied. "Learned a lot from some old friends. Might not be the aesthetic you wanted. I had to scrounge up some parts that would patch you up, so it's all a bit of a Frankenstein job."

"So long as it's flat," Zef says.

"Of course. I'm not a sadist."

Zef has other questions bubbling up through the near-death-experience fog, some of them giving him a stomach ache. He foregoes asking them to say, "Thanks, Dee."

"Actually, figure it's time we gave up the ghost on them pseudonyms. My name's Damo."

"Damo," Zef repeats slowly. "How are you so manly, Damo? I mean, how did you transition so fast? I mean—"

"Good to know the painkillers are working." He rolls away, spinning across the floor, and picks up a repulsively chunky, green smoothie. "I'm an android."

On the list of things Zef expected, this answer hadn't made the cut. He feels like there must be a lagging loading symbol whirling above his head. "Come— a—gain?

"How well do you know your history, sweetie pie?"

"Like, vaguely? Didn't Bionic Capital stop making you, like, a hundred years ago?"

"Sure did. You're welcome, by the way. We androids don't suffer from entropic decline the same way you mere mortals, though. Our parts can slow down or give out, but we just replace 'em. Unless we get murdered or run out of power, we just keep going. Like the Energizer bunny." At Zef's blank stare, Damo says, "Ah, before your time. Anyway, that's why I drink algae. Don't make that face. I know it's gross. And I can shapeshift at will. Which is a game changer when you're genderfluid. You following me so far?"

Zef is lightyears away in outer space. Totally lost.

He gets it in theory. Dee is actually called Damo. Damo is a genderfluid android from a bygone era of technology that was outlawed because sentient servants are majorly unethical. He drinks swamp water to stay alive, and he can shapeshift.

In theory, fine. Emotionally, it's a lot to take in.

It at least explains some of the strange things Zef noticed. Like Damo's obsession with old tech and the way Gray could control him. Even helping Gray out made more sense. Bionic Capital made him. He has as much reason to hate them as Gray.

Though, if their last conversation was any indication, Gray hadn't trusted Damo with the whole truth about Rylan.

"Okay," Damo says. "I can see that's a lot to wrap your slow, organic, meat brain around. However, I kinda need to check how things are healing up under those bandages. How about we table the android lore for laters?"

Faintly, Zef says, "Sure."

Damo unstraps him, muttering that he's glad he used restraints or Zef would have ruined all his hard work when he tried getting up earlier. He cranks the bed into an upright position and slowly peels back the bandages.

It's like when Zef first had surgery, only not at all like that. Both had been to mend something that felt broken. The first was a thing that felt wrong since puberty, but had nevertheless been a part of him. Natural.

His chest now is the result of Gray punching a hole through it.

The hole had been right within the arch of his ribs. Stitches pulled the torn edges of him back together, but the impact and wriggling search for the chip had left his chest implant badly damaged. Part of it had been excised. New skin has grown between, along with a secondary, utilitarian implant to connect the broken parts back together. These seams are unbrushed stainless steel, mundane and crooked compared to the graceful lines of the gold. Zef can only assume there's more going on under the surface. Some kind of splinted replacement for the broken bones.

Damo, to his credit, deserves bragging rights. Considering the damage, Zef's lucky to be alive.

"There'll be scars," Damo says. "But who doesn't have a few of those?"

Zef says, "Thank you," again. Damo saved his life. It would be ungrateful to complain that he'd liked his chest better before it had the scars. Of course he liked it better. He'd chosen it.

Unfortunately, the universe didn't seem to like giving him choices.

While Damo rewraps his wounds, a prickle of shivers runs up Zef's neck like he's being watched. He turns to check.

Sure enough, Gray stands in the doorway. He leans against the frame, arms crossed, gaze distant, like he's not really taking Zef in. Zef feels the urge to cover himself.

"Oi, dickhead," Damo says. "Haven't you heard of doctor patient confidence? Confidenti-ffinity. Fuck. Vocabulary modulator's so damn old, I can't say confidentiality. THERE! I said it! Ha! Fuck you, signs of aging."

All Gray says is, "You made it."

The words are worryingly absent of feeling. Zef says, "I made it."

An unbearable tension ramps up in the room.

Damo tucks in the end of the bandage and says, "Oooookay, I'm going to leave you two alone to catch up. Maybe kiss each other's wounds all better, yeah?"

Gray cuts him a withering look. Damo says, "Yikes," and wheelies his way right out the door, past Gray, who's forced to move aside to let him through.

"He's a character," Zef says, because it means talking about something aside from the hole in his chest. Or the fact Gray left. Or the near death experience in general.

Actually, he does want to talk about one of those things.

"I thought you left me."

Gray grimaces. "Had to make sure she didn't come back to finish the job. Soon as she got gone, I took you to Damo."

"Oh. Thanks."

Another silence falls. Zef doesn't know what to say. Expected Gray might have more to say than he did, but he says nothing at all. Won't meet his eyes. Fidgets with something in his pocket before pulling it out. Another toothpick. He puts it between his teeth and says, "Dee'll kill me if I smoke in here."

"Isn't Dee a codename?"

"Nickname I gave him. Came in handy, in case you recognized the name 'Damo' belonged to a class of android. Didn't know how you'd feel about him."

"He did a good job." Zef touches his chest. "Makes me wonder why you needed me at all if you had an android on your side. He'd have found that data fort in seconds."

Gray shifts his weight, chews his toothpick, but says nothing.

"You never told him Rylan's your—"

"No. Appreciate if you'd forget it, too."

"Not sure that genie can go back in its bottle," Zef murmurs. "You told me you grew up in that slum."

"Didn't lie," Gray says. "Did my real growing there. I was born in that mansion we trashed. Big place. Still not much room for growing, though."

Zef tries to sound gentle. "How did you and she— How did it get like that?"

Zef's gentleness only makes Gray edgier. He sneers. "Knowing what you know about my tech, you really asking how things got so fucked up?"

"I guess I just don't understand how a mom could treat her son that way."

"What do you want me to say? Cycle of abuse? She had shitty parents, and her parents had shitty parents? One big, shitty, generational punch in the dick? What's it matter why she did what she did?"

Zef senses there's more to Gray's thorny and brusque delivery. Like it bothers him, too. "It couldn't always have been like that."

"What's that mean?"

"She's your mom," Zef says. "Isn't there at least some hope of... I dunno, salvaging all this without bloodshed?"

"Salvage—" Gray stares for a very long time. The dark shadows under his eyes look deeper than before, accentuated by the bruise turning green on his cheekbone. The toothpick clenched in his jaw cracks. He spits it out. "Zef, look at what she made me do to you!"

Zef isn't sure he's properly had time to process what happened to him. "I just don't like seeing— I wanna hope there's a way to fix things."

"Fix things," Gray repeats. "She ain't never gonna change. The only change that's gonna fix things with her 'n me is if she's six feet under."

"So that's it? You're still dead set on killing her. That's the only solution."

Icy despondence frosts over the cracks in Gray's guard. He leans back, the heat gone from his tone when he says, "Still so buttoned up, even after all that. Knew you wouldn't get it. You 'n your dad, not all of us got something like that—"

"Fuck! My dad!" Zef moves too quickly. Winces. Grabs his chest. "I told him to wait for me. I never showed— Aw, hell, he's gonna be so worried."

He calls up their text log. Weird... No anxious texts or missed calls from Matthias. Zef rattles out a quick 'check in' message and hits send. It returns an error.

"You're cut off from the Net down here," Gray says. "Won't be able to reach him."

"I have to tell him I'm okay. How long have I been out? I told him to get train tickets then ghosted. Shit, he'll be worried sick by now."

Gray says, "Right now it's best you don't say nothin' to him."

"Are you serious right now? What if Rylan goes after him to get to me, what if—"

"She won't."

He sounds so sure. A wave of nervous intuition comes over Zef. "Why? How do you know?"

"Because," Gray says. "Everyone thinks you're dead."

"Dead," Zef repeats. Slowly. Not understanding.

"Yeah, and for now? It's better that way."