17.

We climb.

I've asked A2 to locate a safe spot with a good vantage point over the Resistance Camp. Since she has been on the outs of YoHRa, I imagine she's got some good spots.

And she doesn't disappoint.

She tells me it's a trek, but I expected that. We go up slow, taking old staircases. Whenever there's a blocked path, I use the debris or overgrown vegetation to climb my way up. Higher and higher. A2 doesn't perspire—doubt she even has the option—but my clothes stick to me.

She glances at me now and then, and she's probably wondering how humans can be so utterly pitiful. I give a grin whenever it looks like she wants to just throw me to the top. I'm taller than her, broader than her, but I am not an android and I doubt I'd be difficult to throw around,

It takes what must feel like an obscenely long time to A2 to reach the room she suggested. When we reach it, she crosses her arms over her chest and stands next to a table.

The room is bare aside from that old table that has been eaten away by wood bugs.

All I want to do is flop on my face, but I go to the window.

Yes.

This is perfect.

"A2, you're awesome." I turn to her with a wink. "This is perfect."

She raises her eyebrows but says nothing. She looks away.

My chest rises and falls.

The Resistance Camp is below. I cannot see inside, but I have an open view of the sheltered entrance. I unpack Noggin and my blanket and set the blanket along the window. I rummage through my pack, finding nuts to replenish myself with, and then grab the pair of eye lenses the weapon's dealer in the machine village gifted me. He called them "binoculars" and said he found them while searching for weapons parts.

Noggin waddles around and A2 watches him with an expression that suggests she's doing everything in her power to not boot him off the side of the building.

A2 and I haven't really spoken since we met a few hours earlier. She's assessing me. We're both unknown variables to each other. I don't think she is a danger to me, but I don't know if she's someone I can use for protection, either. She ditched YoHRa, which means she's not all that interested in their ideals.

Maybe, as an android, she is instilled with the instinct to protect humans, but—maybe she's not disillusioned. Maybe she doesn't care for humans all that much, despite her programming.

It goes to say I survived this long on my own out of sheer luck. It'd be beneficial to have A2 help me out.

But she's hard to look at. A face like hers. Like 2B's.

Noggin waddles up to me. "Why here?"

He doesn't normally ask questions. He doesn't initiate conversation at all, really.

"The camp."

"Why?"

"There's someone I want to see."

Noggin considers this, and then wanders away.

I sit on the sill. The grey ceiling is full of cobwebs and cracks. Signs of loss and emptiness. This world is so fucking bleak.

A2 comes into my vision range. She stands over me. "Ribbon."

"Yes?"

"Why is a human travelling with a machine?"

"He's harmless, like a child." I make myself smile like that might assure her. But I know that isn't the issue. She knows he's not a threat.

"Can I dispatch him?" she asks.

I pause. "No. I'd rather you not." Androids and machines just kill willy nilly, don't they?

Noggin peers at us without a word.

A2 scoffs and leans her elbows against the window sill, next to me. Her hair cascades along her back as she peers out, and my stomach clinches. Just like 2B. Her face. If her hair was short, she'd—

I unclench my jaw. "You're a deserter, right?"

She says nothing.

Noggin waddles back to me. He stops beside us and stares up at me.

"You were part of YoHRa?" I've assumed this since meeting her. "That blade you carry. It's a older YoHRa model." I saw that type of sword in Nines' arsenal.

She glances at me.

I lean back. "I have nothing to do with YoHRa, to be honest. The humans YoHRa communicates with up on the moon—I know nothing about them."

She stays quiet.

"I guess I'm not 'your' human."

"You are too young, anyway." She flicks a strand of hair out of her face.

"For?"

"Having any involvement in a certain operation I was involved with in the past."

Noggin peers at her now.

She spins around and places one of her shoes between Noggin's glowing yellow eyes. "If you are some kind of spy, I will blow you to bits."

Noggin steps back and wanders to one of my legs that is dangling. He presses against me, cold.

"Don't bully him." I speak through a laugh.

A2 frowns.

I stand. "It's okay, Noggin." Beside A2, I am a little taller. I'd be taller than 2B and Nines now. Funny.

Outside the window, the day is cloudy but bright, the sky a pearl white, equal parts eerie and beautiful.

I hold the binoculars to my face and focus on the Resistance Camp's partially hidden entrance.

"It is an android you are looking for?" A2 asks.

"Yes."

"Not a machine?"

I shake my head.

"You are staking out androids as . . . an enemy?"

I glance at her. "You can say I don't have a lot of love for this YoHRa organisation."

"Are you allies with machines?" Her voice is tight. "I don't understand how a human could possibly—"

"I am not allies or enemies with anyone." I go back to scoping.

The entrance is quiet. There's a moose milling around. Some machines pitter patter around nearby. A bird crosses my vision.

"What is it you're searching for?" A2 asks.

I set the binoculars down with a sigh. "Um, really, my goal is to find out if there are any other humans on Earth." I turn to her. "Like me."

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't. Everyone I could've known is dead, apparently, but there must be something around here—or around the machine village—that is a hint of the humans I come from." I lean against the wall next to the window. "A hint of what happened. The past. And then maybe, the future. What I should do now."

A2 taps her fingers against the sill.

"What do you want, A2?"

She leans against the wall on the other side of the window. "I've wanted to kill any machine I can get my hands on. That's about the extent of it."

I tilt my head. "Revenge?"

"Yes."

"I know about that."

Light pools in between us.

She lifts her head. "So, if you are searching for other humans—or where you came from—why are you up here looking for an android?"

"Ever had more than one goal, A2?" I half-grin. "I am checking in on someone."

She frowns.

"I can't help myself." I rub my shoulder and crane my neck. "It has been a long time since I've seen him."

Noggin seems to be "asleep" now. He has not moved in a while and stares blankly ahead.

I rub my eyes. I'm exhausted, too. Really.

A2 is eyeing Noggin with a sour expression.

"Listen, I gotta sleep." I drop down on the blanket. "Human needs call." I stifle a yawn. "Will you be here when I wake up?"

She starts.

I wait.

She levels me with a look. "What would you like me to do?"

"I'd like you to stay," I say, "but it is up to you. What do you want to do?"

She draws her arms over her chest. "I don't know."

"That's fine." I roll onto my side. "It's not a contract."

I fall asleep in perfect comfort. Having an android around eases me. I might be able to survive, after all.

If she stays with me.

When I wake, Noggin is face down on my stomach. He is heavy and it's difficult to breathe.

I nudge him off and he rolls a little ways away. Clocked out.

What an oddball.

I roll my shoulders, stretch, and yawn.

A2 is gone.

I get up and grab the binoculars and peer down at the camp.

A2 likely has a vastly different experience than Nines and 2B. She seems jaded. There's obviously a reason she deserted YoHRa. Nines should leave, too. He could live out here like her, can't he? What would Nines be like as a deserter?

Free and curious and—happy, probably.

Right?

Although I wouldn't describe A2 as happy.

How does A2 feel about humans?

Does her view on them really conflict with how she is programmed to feel about them?

She seems wary of me.

Guess I am pretty suspicious, chumming around with a weird machine and spying on the Resistance.

Whatever. She left me.

I sit on the windowsill, one leg dangling out again, and watch and wait.

My back gets sore after a few hours so I get up and stretch. I pace for a while, and then go back to watching.

Androids come and go throughout the day.

And finally—finally, they arrive.

They're heading in.

Nines and 2B.

They've stopped at the entrance and are talking.

Nines looks the same. Nothing about him changes, appearance wise, but I kind of wish it did. My throat constricts and my heart rate increases. I wish he would change so I wouldn't be brought back to the exact moment I saw him last: the way he choked on his own blood, but before that, too—before 2B interrupted us, when I reached for him and finally, finally started to grasp what it meant to want to stay with someone.

He is talking animatedly to 2B, who has a hand on her hip as she listens.

"I know those two."

I about fall out the window to my death in my alarm. I grip onto the sill and jerk myself inside.

A2 is standing a few feet away.

I clasp my chest. "You scared the hell out of me."

She's back.

Wait.

"Those two?" I point to the small shapes by the entrance.

She takes the binoculars from me and looks through them. "Yes, it's definitely them. They have orders to find and kill me."

"Oh. Shit." I scratch my head. "Have you run into them?"

"Briefly, yes." She hands me back the binoculars. "Are they the ones you're looking for?"

"The male android was my friend. The female android isn't so much."

If A2 stays with me—if they're looking for her—they'll find me too.

What will I do then?

Well, I can help A2. If I tell them not to harm her, they won't, will they? Because it's a human's word over the commander's?

"If he's your friend, why are you stalking him?" A2 asks.

I flinch. "I'm not—not stalking. I'm just looking out for him."

A2 quirks an eyebrow.

"He doesn't . . . he doesn't remember me."

A2 scoffs. "Ah, memory wipe?"

"Yeah."

"Sounds like standard YoHRa business." She shrugs.

"Is that why you left?"

"No." She turns away. "I noticed you eating nuts, so." She points to the blanket, where she has left a pile of vegetables and nuts.

"Oh." I point at them. "That's perfect! Thanks. You didn't have to go get food for me."

"I had nothing else to." She stretches into the air and walks a little ways away. "Besides, I took out some machines along the way, so it was a good day."

Ah.

She is. She is programmed to take care of humans. What is that like, to have a will that is just in you? She will be partial to me, won't she?

"Great." And it is, because now I can use her.

She rolls an unresponsive Noggin with her foot. "What's with this thing, anyway?"

"I think he's faulty."

"Should I put him out of his misery?"

"No."

She glances at me, smirks, and shrugs again.

"So, are you gonna tag along with me?" I kick my feet on the sill.

"I'd like to know if there are more humans, too." She waves a hand. "So, why not?"

Can she hear my pulse drumming away? The way the blood thrashes in me?

We'll use each other, then. The word is on the tip of my tongue, to suggest it, to let her know I want to be level with her—"friends"—but the word leaves a bad taste and I can't bring myself to say it. I already had a friend, and now I carry his sword that describes exactly what we're apart of.

I peer down at the shapes below. Nines and 2B head into the camp.

A cruel oath to always be friends.

I'm going to get him back, somehow—shatter the chains of his command only to chain him to me, destroy the power 2B has over him, make it so freedom and entrapment is the same coin—and A2 is going to help me.

AN: Thank-you everyone for the love! I am glad I still have readers. I am planning to get back to a regular update schedule!

Also some of you mentioned A2 knowing about humans being extinct, but from what I remember, she finds that information out at the end of the game in the tower's library. She deserted because she found out Command sent her and her squad on a suicide mission with the intention to study their battle type and personalities. But correct me if I'm wrong!