⚠ WARNING: ⚠ if you're reading both novellas, read BioSynth first this week.

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Like any other metropolis, the city of Lyz didn't sleep. Street cameras kept recording, public transportation kept running, the world kept turning. At night, as during the day, people went about their business. They greeted the sun with hurried steps and the moon in a garishly bright display of neon colours, features painted in light or obscured by shadow. Some out to have fun, others to work.

Light and dark were relative concepts.

As a rule of thumb, none of this bothered Ian; tonight was different.

Tonight, Quentin's dot blinked. Beckoning Ian. In a night like this one, with rain so thick he could barely see his hand in front of his face, and no longer having a car of his own, it was the difference between reaching Quentin in three hours or five.

Next to him on the cab sat the biomaglock hovercase, ready to assemble with a single click. Where he used to transport captured BioSynths, he now had to convince Quentin to hide in for safety. His work nexus was back at the house, Tracking app rerouted to the untraceable one he had on now. If anyone tried to contact him, he wouldn't get the call; his location wouldn't ping any suspicious hubs.

Whether he pulled it off depended on the level of surveillance SynSec had him under.

He was drenched the moment he stepped off the cab, clothes clinging to his skin as he waited for the train to arrive. With nothing but a fool's hope whoever had Quentin's codes had decided against going after a low value target on a rainy Saturday night, or that they were even farther away than Ian was.

Heat eradicated raindrops the instant they touched the train's glass windows, as if having an undistorted view of the world outside was paramount. As if human beings didn't distort everything else and kept on running, well-oiled machines in which the squeaky wheel was annihilated and replaced, rather than greased.

They'd created life and sent it off to war. Then they'd declared it worthless when it refused to be a tool of destruction any longer. An object. Invalid.

'You're the monster here.'

There were no raindrops on the window; all the drops in his reflected face had to be his own.

Had he really told Quentin weapons didn't weep? The hubris. What had Ian been for twenty years, if not a weapon? Methodically ripping apart lives, dreams, freedom?

The train gave way to a crowded bus, to a subway, to a different train. Quentin's dot never moved. The rain never let up. Until he stood at last in front of the building where Quentin had to be.

He hoped Quentin would listen before trying to run, if only so Ian could give him the credits and warn him about SynSec.

The flat's door was broken in. Ian's breath caught, his gun drawn the next moment.

There was a strong possibility what lay on the other side of that door wasn't Quentin at all — that the codes Travers had sent him were nothing but bait — but, if that were the case, why give the game away by breaking down the door? Quentin's dot was still blinking. Still alive.

Ian let calm be his anchor. He opened the door.

"Ian," Quentin said in the darkness, his voice laboured. "I don't want to shoot you, but I will if I have to. Walk away while you still can."

He'd Tracked in the dark before, his eyes adjusting quickly to discern shapes, if not features. Quentin. Shaking on the floor, back to the wall. Ian noticed the gun in his right hand. He couldn't take in other details, but it was Quentin's left hand that drew his gaze. What was left of it. There was only a skeleton arm and Quentin's frame wracked by gasps.

From the moment Ian saw that, he forgot to be afraid Quentin would shoot. His husband needed him now; there was nothing else he could do. Taking quick strides, it was with some detachment he noticed Quentin had fired a warning shot, issued another threat, aimed at his head.

Despite all that, the state Quentin was in didn't let him offer any resistance when Ian took the gun from him. Ian would be sick later, when he let it sink in that every hitch in Quentin's breath, every tear trickling from his eyes, was a reaction to pain receptors turned all the way up; for now, he had to concentrate on turning those off.

Then the pleading started. Ian did his best not to listen, not to focus on the string of please, and don't take me in and, worst of all, shoot me. He wished he could afford to comfort Quentin, but the clock was ticking. Other Trackers might have Quentin's codes, might be on their way here, and the minute Ian allowed himself to absorb the words he'd crumble.

Throat clogged up, he pulled Quentin towards him as gently as he could as he took the knife from his boot and sliced, fingers reaching for the pain controls he couldn't see in the dark.

Quentin slumped against Ian, breathing easier now that his own body wasn't being used against him, and Ian told himself off for the spike of longing that went through him. Quentin needed an escape route. Not a man who'd hunted him down, who'd caused him to be tortured and maimed, who hadn't had the strength to stand by his side.

Despising himself that little bit further, Ian pressed Quentin's switch.

Darkness was a boon he didn't deserve, for how it didn't show him every detail of what it looked like, to close Quentin up in a box as if he were a thing. As if he weren't more precious to Ian than any human being ever had been.

There were two bodies on the floor, but Ian didn't turn on the light for them. If those were the people who'd done this to Quentin, they deserved to rot in the dark, whoever they were.

He took Quentin to an unmanned motel he knew of, where the only criteria were the credits paid to the automatic machine that served as a front desk. No records, no signatures, no questions asked. Just a room slotted so close together with a dozen others that anyone would have had a hard time pinpointing the one they were in.

Once inside, door locked, Ian took Quentin from the case with the utmost care before laying him down gently on the bed, removing both Quentin's and his own boots, and crashing asleep next to him. He needed a steady hand and a rested body for what he had to do tomorrow.

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Morning brought its share of horror. Last night, in the dark, Ian had noticed Quentin's arm, but not his face. The damage to his right side was extensive, starting just next to his eye in a groove and opening wide enough to expose most of his cheek's mechanism. Nothing could justify that. It wasn't a botched capture, it was senseless torture. SynSec had done this to Quentin. Wilfully, deliberately, by choosing who to send his codes to, just to test Ian's loyalty.

He wanted the entire building to burn.

But that was the easy way out. Guilt and grief cleaved his insides.

He had done this to Quentin. By pulling his gun on him, by making him flee, by dogging his steps. None of this would have happened if he'd stuck by his husband on the night of the crash.

'You're the monster here.'

Light and dark were relative concepts, wasn't that what he'd thought?

He swallowed down his pain with some bottled juice and took his tools out. Quentin had stolen his own manual, but Ian remembered all the manuals he'd ever gone through. He remembered the diagram, knew the location of Quentin's model's tracking chip well enough for it not to be a problem.

It was time to set his husband free.

He'd have made a decent surgeon. His hands didn't shake as he separated wires from synthetic organs with the utmost care, his work going on for over two hours. He knew it was work that could be done in ten minutes, but he was taking no risks. And then all that was left was to grip the edge of the tracking chip with a pair of tweezers and — ever so gently — pry it loose. Quentin's organs reformed around the blank space left by the chip.

No longer working inside Quentin's back, Ian's grip tightened, tweezers snapping the deceptively delicate chip in half.

This was it.

Ian turned Quentin's pain receptors to their normal setting, pressed his switch, and stepped away from the bed.

Ten.

He needed Quentin not to fear him for long enough to hear Ian out—

Nine.

—so he could give him the credits, offer assistance, help him escape.

Eight.

Maybe the removal of his chip would be enough that Quentin might give him the benefit of the doubt.

Seven.

There were answers Ian craved, but he wouldn't press. Not after everything.

Six.

And it was staggering, heartrending, this entrenched wish that it wouldn't be this way.

Five.

But it was too late. Too late to change who he'd been for the past twenty years, even if never too late to change who he'd be going forward.

Four.

Too late for them, but, oh, what Ian wouldn't give for it not to be so.

Three.

He'd do better from here on out, even if Quentin would never know.

Two.

He hoped he could free enough BioSynths, make them untraceable, to call it a decent start.

One.

Hoped that, over time, he would become a man Quentin would have been proud of, in another life.

Zero.

Quentin didn't turn back on.

Breath caught in his lungs. Ian waited another ten seconds, another sixty, another hour. He tried Quentin's switch again, turning him off and back on as if he were the machine Ian had once believed BioSynths to be. The nanites were working, the organs running. Quentin wouldn't turn on.

Still calm, he called the handful of decent Trackers he could think of, to see if any of them knew how to boot an unresponsive BioSynth back up. The reply was unanimous. It didn't matter if the organs were functioning. If they didn't turn back on, there was no way. Either their memory or their emotions chip must have been damaged, short circuited, and there was nothing left but a shell.

Dead.

In trying to free him, Ian had killed the man he loved.

He cradled Quentin's body in his arms — still warm, synthetic heart beating strong against Ian's chest with no one inside — and held him close, a sob wrenching itself free. He'd had Quentin in his arms like this a handful of hours ago, Quentin begging him for death, and he hadn't been able to find the words to allay his fears. The words that were bursting forth from his lips with no control now. No, and come back, and please, and I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.

Night had fallen once more when he finally laid Quentin back down, kissing his brow, hand cupping his ruined cheek. It didn't matter what Quentin was made of; it had never mattered, but Ian hadn't known, and now he'd never get to tell him.

Moved by a fragment of hope so vicious as to be destructive, he left Quentin in that bed, in that bedroom, and made his way to Wave Plaza, to a seedy shop and a man whose nose he had broken not so long ago. If anyone knew how to bring a BioSynth back from the state Quentin was in, it'd be that kind of man.

But the man knew nothing, he swore he knew nothing, that it couldn't be done. He kept shaking his head for no, even as he soiled himself, as Ian's interrogation stretched on well past midnight, Ian's loaded gun wedged between his parted lips.

He left the man behind, terrified out of his wits but alive. Killing him wouldn't bring back Quentin. Nothing would.

Everything caught up to him in a rush, in a piss-stained alley: his concussion, all the hours he hadn't slept, all the food he hadn't eaten, his bottomless grief. Quentin was dead. He fell to his knees, a wounded roar escaping him, and couldn't find the will to get back up again.

Ian had no idea how much time had passed when a gun pressed itself to the back of his head. He didn't bother trying to see who it belonged to.

Let them shoot. He had nothing left to lose anymore.

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Thank you for reading!

Travers's codes were the real deal after all. Which doesn't seem to have helped Quentin, in the end. (Feel free to yell at me in the comments.)

I'm wondering who you think's on the other end of that gun. Any theories?

Please remember to hit that lovely vote button if you if feel this chapter has what it takes. Also, expect the next update on Wednesday, by which time I'll know whether BioSynth and/or SynTracker have made it to the next round of the ONC.

Want to know how Quentin got captured in the first place? Tune in to BioSynth, SynTracker's companion novella (link on my profile) to find out!