"What did you do?" Ulla's voice barely punctured the fog that was his grief.

On his knees on the ground, Ian didn't raise his head before replying, "I killed him."

"Your husband?" She cocked the gun, pressing it harder. "Was that how you wanted to 'help' him?"

"I wanted him to be free." He choked. "I don't know where I went wrong. I followed every instruction — his... model was supposed to be easier than yours. I didn't damage anything, not that I saw."

"Tracker." She slid the gun under his chin and pressed up so he'd meet her eyes. "What were you trying to do?"

Answering her was easy, the words cascading like water, evidence of his guilt. "I took his tracking chip. But I killed him." He closed his eyes, the gun retreating. He hoped that meant she was aiming.

"Tracker," she insisted. "Get up."

"No need." After the last twenty years? After Quentin? Dying on his feet or on his knees made no difference.

"You can wallow in self-pity after you've done your duty," she said, in a tone so much like the mother she was, he opened his eyes just from the surprise of it. She'd put her gun away. "Get up, I said. He's not dead."

Hope blossomed, sharp and terrible, slicing through him like a laser knife through butter. She might be tricking him — toying with him for revenge — but he had to believe she wasn't the type. He got up as instructed, a plea in his voice. "Tell me what I have to do."

☵☲☵

"He needs a tracking chip to boot up," Ulla said, eating canned soup she'd heated with just her hand while sitting at the foot of the bed where Quentin lay immobile. Something in her expression had turned soft the moment she'd seen Quentin, as if looking at him was the final thing she needed to be sure Ian and she stood on the same side of the divide. Ian sat on the floor eating his own soup, incongruously heated the same way. If he was to be useful, he'd need to be in as good shape as he could manage. "We can't function without them. That will tell you all you need to know about how they never planned to keep the promises they made us."

He set the can down to massage his temples. "I don't know who they are, or what promises they made you."

"Humans," she said, but she didn't sound hateful. Just used to it. "During the war. We were always told we'd get to integrate once Xeygh was defeated. Be normal. Have a life."

"But they designed you to be trackable at all times," he finished for her. "And never put that info in the manuals." A revolting picture. Ian had never known BioSynths had once wanted to become a part of human society. No one knew. He reached for his soup again, trying to figure out the missing piece of the puzzle. "But I've heard of so many BioSynths who got rid of their chips and vanished, and their codes never showed up again."

"Really? So many? Think for yourself: how many were their Trackers?" She helped him reach his own conclusions with a patience he imagined she usually reserved for the children he'd dragged her away from. There was none of the vitriol she'd displayed in his garage.

And 'his own conclusions' were chilling. "Three, maybe four Trackers." One or two outliers who'd only lost a single BioSynth that way, but all the other BioSynths had been tracked by the same Trackers. "They never escaped, did they? They were murdered." He couldn't eat another spoonful if he tried.

"Now you get it. I thought you might be one of those, back in your garage." She patted his knee before he could open his mouth, a comforting gesture he had no right to accept. "Some would say I should call myself lucky to get one with a conscience."

Ian grimaced. "I wouldn't call you lucky for what I put you through."

"I wouldn't either. I have the right to exist without being rounded up like cattle." She took a deep breath. "But your turnaround time was impressive. And I lived through a war, child." Child? He supposed, to her, he might as well be. "What you did won't leave lasting scars."

"Why are you so..." How to phrase this? "Treating me this way?"

"You mean why I'm not telling you to go fuck yourself?"

He tried to smile, but his heart wasn't in it. "Yes."

Her smile, on the other hand, went all the way to her hazel eyes. The same colour as Quentin's, he realised, as tears threatened. "Can't spare the energy. You mean me no harm, and I'm not afraid of you anymore. It's easier to hate when you're afraid."

That she could find it in her to feel that way when he'd been a Tracker for twenty years... "Even without the fear, you had every right to hate me."

"I have the right. But I don't exercise it. It's my choice." She shrugged. "You didn't know any better. Now you do. And you're going to help me."

"And Quentin?" The question had been burning his tongue since he'd realised what she meant, but he was terrified of the answer. "I destroyed his chip."

"He needs a new one. I do too. That's the only way we can be free."

All the air rushed from his lungs, his head dizzy even though he was sitting down. Of course. "Blank. No codes, no one Tracks you."

"You're a fast learner."

He wouldn't call twenty years fast by any standard, but he let it stand. "Where do we get them?"

"Your home office received a box last week."

'I have a shipment of fucking tracking chips here to process by Wednesday, so I'll let you get to it,' Travers had said on Friday. The answer had been staring Ian in the face. His Tracker Elite insignia would—

Why had the smile fallen from her face?

"What aren't you telling me?"

She exhaled, setting down her empty can of soup on the floor by the bed. "Tracking chips are model-specific. I know they have mine, but I don't know which other chips they have."

So Ian would blow what was left of his cover and, in the end, it might not even help Quentin. "Do we have a better option?"

"No. I don't know where any of the factories are. But if you ever figure out where his is, that," she jerked her head towards the black skeleton that used to be Quentin's hand, "can be fixed. At least it could, in the old days. They'd inject him with new nanites, grow fresh skin, repair organs. A few weeks and he'd have been good as new. Nowadays... Our creation has been illegal for fifty years. Maybe there's no one left who knows how to do it, anymore. They certainly never let that knowledge anywhere near any of us."

That was tomorrow's problem. Today he'd steal tracking chips. If there was a chance, the slimmest of chances it would help Quentin — or even if it only helped Ulla — he had to try.

They argued over how to approach the mission. Ulla wanted to use his Elite insignia to get in while wearing Ian's face, but he wouldn't have it. Yes, she was a highly skilled infiltrator who'd done countless missions in the war, but all those missions had had one thing in common: prep time.

And time was of the essence. It'd take her twelve hours to completely alter her features, whereas he looked like himself today. He knew the place like the back of his hand, knew the people he might run into. She couldn't absorb that knowledge overnight. If they pushed the break-in to tomorrow only to find out the chips had been sent somewhere else today, he'd never forgive himself. No. It made no sense to pose as Ian when Ian was right there.

He needed her on the outside, to take care of Quentin for him if something happened.

Maybe Quentin would even prefer it that way.

☵☲☵

Getting in had been as easy as expected. This was the Tracker Liaison Office, not SynSec. Security was a joke, as long as he gave up his weapons at the front desk. One swipe of his insignia before five pm, and no one questioned what he was doing there or why. Even hiding in the bathroom to wait for the stragglers to leave had posed no issue. Ulla was three blocks away, eating dinner at a restaurant.

He'd have preferred it if she'd stayed back at the motel, to make sure no one came for Quentin, but he couldn't be sure Travers hadn't ended up passing her codes onto someone else; he didn't want her anywhere near Quentin under those conditions unless he was there to protect them.

Ian glanced at his untraceable nexus: half-past nine. It was almost time. The drone that swept the floor for intruders would reach the bathroom in eight minutes, its patterns entirely predictable, and he planned to be gone three minutes before that.

Travers had summoned him to his office multiple times over the years, to fill out inane forms deemed too sensitive to be sent even over secure channels. Labyrinthine as the floor was, Ian could navigate it with his eyes closed. The office itself was probably locked at this hour, but a locked door he could deal with.

Finding the chips would be the bigger issue: he had no way of knowing where they were stored, or even if Travers had already finished processing them. The second-best-case scenario was that they'd be somewhere in the building, and Travers would have the detailed forms in his office nexus.

The door was ajar, stealing Ian's breath for a moment. Inside, nothing moved.

He had no choice but to go in. As with the flat, with Quentin's blinking dot, he hoped a trap would have been better laid out. And the fact remained, the possibility was irrelevant; he couldn't not try.

The moment he turned on his nexus light, his heart sped up. His luck held truer than he could have hoped for. Right in front of him, in plain view, on Travers's desk, was the box of chips. Thirty or so, by the looks of it, and not all the same. Some more were on the desk, Travers's work nexus next to them. He'd nearly finished processing them; Ian had made the right call coming today.

He transferred them to his backpack, careful not to damage them, and turned off the light. If things went well, that was over thirty people he might help. A drop in the ocean of twenty years of Tracking, but a start.

He opened the door to find a gun in his face. "Get your fucking hands up, thief." Proper light flooded the office. "Morgan?? The fuck are you doing, stealing things from my office?" Astonishment replaced the triumph on Travers's face. The man never worked this late. Of all nights, did it have to be this one?

No. Quentin's life might be in his backpack. It couldn't end this way. His senses sharpened, heartbeat slowing down. He took a step back into the office, hands raised, allowing Travers to get in so the doorway would be unobstructed. There was a way to play this, if Travers was who he appeared to be. And, if he weren't, both Ian and Quentin were already dead. "I need the chips to help Quentin. I wish it didn't have to be this way." He meant it, too.

"Quentin?" Pity in Travers's voice, but the gun didn't waver. "Fuck, Morgan. He's dead. You said so yourself. Look," the man exhaled, looking torn, "I won't fuck you over. Just leave the chips, get out, and tomorrow I expect to see a request for psych help on my desk. Your husband just fucking died — you're not thinking straight."

Would Travers have enough empathy in him for Ian's revelation to make a difference? He was about to find out. "Quentin's not dead. That's why I need the chips." He took a step in Travers's direction, forcing him to step back, further away from the door.

"Fuck that, Morgan. Are you listening to what you're saying?"

Yes, he was aware of how insane that sounded. "They're AI, Travers. True AI. Thinking, feeling AI. That's what the meeting with SynSec was about. I'm facing life in jail for treason just for telling you this: Quentin was always a BioSynth. AI is real. And SynSec confirmed he's been sending them to the mines, as slaves. He said it to my face." The rest was even more horrifying, and not something that ought to be dropped in the time he had.

Travers opened and closed his mouth like a fish. It'd take him time to process that, to decide if he believed Ian. And time was the one thing Quentin didn't have. Ian stared him down. "You can believe me or not, but I'm not letting my husband die if I can help him." Lowered his hands. "You must have seen more BioSynths than I have over the years." Took a step towards the door. "When you think about it, does it feel that unbelievable? That they're people, not programs?" And took the biggest gamble of his life. "There are two ways this ends: I walk out that door with the chips, or I get carried out in a body bag. Your choice." He turned his back on Travers and walked out.

"Morgan!"

Ian didn't look back.

He heard the click of a gun being cocked. "Morgan!"

The shot didn't come. The alarm didn't ring. No one stopped the elevator on its way down from the thirty-fourth floor, or was waiting to shoot him on the ground floor.

☵☲☵

At the motel, Ulla went through the chips one by one, listing model numbers for each. Thirty seven chips. Two for her model. Three for Quentin's. Thirty-five other lives he could make better. Hope warred with caution in his breast, making even the certainty that Quentin would walk away from him easier to bear. He'd walk away, but he'd be alive. Free.

Ulla tempered some of his joy with terror by insisting he install her new chip when he thought she'd have someone else to do that for her. BioSynths couldn't switch tracking chips, she told him. They'd shut down the instant they touched a functioning one. She went through simulations with him, projecting a detailed holorama of her insides and explaining, with ruthless patience, how he'd go about doing it. It was almost overwhelming to think she'd trust him enough to shut down in front of him after everything.

Ten seconds after he'd finished and flipped her switch, she opened her eyes a free woman.

She kept watch as he did the same for Quentin, his movements sure and precise with the confidence that he'd done it right before. After her more complicated one, and having done Quentin's once before, it took him half as long this time around. But Quentin wouldn't wake up straight away, she cautioned. With the damage he'd sustained, it would take him a couple of hours for a full system rebuild, now that Ian had turned him back on. What mattered was that he'd wake. All thanks to her intel.

Ian escorted her to a waiting cab, insisting she take one of the cards he'd gotten from Zaiden. Fifty thousand credits. Enough for new identities for her, her partner, their children. For a new start if they wanted to move away. Credits would never remotely make up for what he'd done, and he wouldn't be able to extend even that small courtesy to future BioSynths, but she was the only one he'd paralysed and interrogated; the only one who'd offered him hope when he'd had none.

He dropped by the reception on his way back, to buy some food from the vending machine. A few more cans of soup, bottles of water, and some protein bars. Not the meal he'd have hoped to offer, but at least they had Quentin's favourite brand, and he was bound to wake up hungry.

On the reception nexus, Travers's face was live on the news. A fire had consumed his office, he said, destroying thousands of credits in government property. Faulty sensors had failed to pick it up. It had been lucky he'd been working overtime, or it might have spread to the entire building. Head of Tracker Liaison Office Risks Life To Put Out Fire, read the caption.

No one would come looking for the chips, Ian realised, sparing a grateful smile for the mercurial Travers, who always seemed to find his empathy when it mattered the most.

A flashing text box proclaimed Next on Lyz Nightly: Factory Explosion in Old Tech District — Opposition Calls for Stricter Regulation of Unmanned Factories.

Ian didn't stay behind to watch the rest. Quentin would wake up in less than an hour, and Ian wanted to be there when he did.

He needed to say goodbye.

☰☱☲☳☴☵☶☵☴☳☲☱☰

Thank you for reading!

Were you expecting Ulla's return like this? How about Travers's attitude?

As usual, please remember to vote if you if feel it's deserved.

Both SynTracker and BioSynth have made it through the Round 2 Qualifier! The next update will come tomorrow, in celebration!

Want to know what Quentin's been up to? Tune in to BioSynth, SynTracker's companion novella (link on my profile) to find out!