“How?” Lyra asked. “There are too many of them.”

“I don’t know,” Acidalia said, breathing heavily. “We’ll figure it out.” She cocked her blaster gun again, diving behind a pillar. “I wish I could talk to Andromeda, but no transmissions can go through here. This room was designed for use by one or two people at a time—communication is difficult. It’s too old for the architects to have thought about it.”

“Where’s Alpha-24?” Lyra asked. “I bet he has access to the security systems. If we bomb the place out and make a run for it, he might know how to get us out of here.”

Acidalia shook her head. “I doubt he’d help us.”

“Why?” Lyra asked, confused. “He seemed like he likes us.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Acidalia said. “Androids—well, they’re not exactly programmed to make their own decisions about anything. Who knows how he might react to being asked two different things by two different people? Why would he help us more than he would help any other human being? Robots are supposed to listen to what humans tell them, and if two humans are telling them contradictory things, well… there’s no knowing what might happen. That’s part of why this technology was outlawed almost immediately after it was created.”

“Can we bypass it somehow? Whatever you just did on those computers, you can do on a robot, right? Computers run on code, humans run on code. How different can it be?”

“Astoundingly different. Besides, these machines are hundreds of years old. I have no idea how they were made. I’d have to look it up, which would take time that we don’t have, and-“

“Okay, so that’s not an option,” Lyra sighed, feeling her eyelids almost droop. She was so tired she was practically falling asleep in a battlefield—not that it really felt like a battlefield at all.

“But maybe he could access places humans can’t,” Acidalia said slowly, eyes widening.

“What do you mean?”

“He was designed to work the Terminal. So, logically, he should know the passages that I wouldn’t know, the places that were only designed for robots to use. We just need to get him to want to help us. We need to get him out of here—that way nobody else can influence his decisions and he’ll have to follow us. Where us he?”

“I saw him by the entrance,” Lyra said. “But how are-“

“I have a plan. I’ll get them to pursue me—it’ll distract them, but keep them away from him. You get to him, turn him on, and get him out the door.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll follow. Keep your helmet on and avoid the shrapnel.”

“Shrapnel? What-“

“Go, hurry!” A laser bolt shot past Lyra’s head. They’d found her hiding space.

While Acidalia sprinted to the other side of the room, gun drawn, Lyra ran in the opposite direction. For once, the pink hair came in handy. Acidalia’s long black mane was clearly visible in the room, clashing against the whiteness and the floaty, pastel light, but Lyra blended in perfectly. She was good at making herself small—she’d spent enough of her childhood scrounging for scraps and running from people to know how to hide well. While the soldiers were distracted, she slipped underneath them, crawling along the wet floor.

Alpha-24 stood by the doorway, eyes closed and skin covered in a protective sheen that Lyra hadn’t noticed before. He was too heavy for her to move, but she couldn’t figure out how to switch him on. Her tiny fingers traced his cold, pale metal skin, searching for any button or knob she could interact with.

At his neck, she felt a metal lump where a human being’s pulse would be. She pressed down on it, and the android’s eyes lit up in phosphorescent blue.

“Salve,” he said slowly, blinking. Why does he need to blink? Lyra wondered.

“We need to get out of here,” Lyra whispered, “and I need you to be very, very, very quiet.”

“Okay,” he said softly. It wasn’t a whisper—it was a spoken word—but it was low, like his volume was turned down. His face didn’t show a modicum of concern, though that made sense, considering he probably didn’t have the ability to feel any kind of anxiety. The plasticky sheen protecting him from the moisture vanished into his skin, save for the space around his feet, and he began to walk towards the main exit, the very place the soldiers were guarding.

“No!” Lyra hissed quickly. “Are there any other exits?”

“Yes, but they are not intended for human use-“

“I don’t care,” Lyra added. “Show them to me. Please.”

“As you wish,” Alpha said mildly. He ambled into the mist, seemingly aimless, looking for something that wasn’t visible to Lyra. Then he vanished completely, swallowed up in the porous floor. Lyra went to follow him, but then she felt herself falling. It was pitch black and warm, like there was a fire burning underneath her, and she screamed involuntarily, her stomach rising in her throat. Alpha-24 landed gracefully, pulling Lyra up by her shirt a millisecond before her head cracked against the ground.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She rubbed her head. “Okay. Alpha, you’re my friend, right?”

“I can be your friend. I like you,” he replied in his weird, stilted way of speaking. “You said you will take me out of here.”

“Yes, we will! Me and Acidalia, I mean. But, um, to do that, we need your help. We need you to do something very important.”

“Whatever would that be?” he asked, sounding slightly inquisitive.

“We need you to get Acidalia out of here, with me,” Lyra said. “Is there an exit this way? Where are we?”

“This is just inside the walls,” Alpha said. “This was not supposed to be here, but it has been a long time since the Terminal was built.” He gestured to a pipe running along a wall. “Heat and water come through here. I used to go here when it was cold.”

“You can feel temperatures?” Lyra asked, surprised. Why in the world would someone create a robot that could physically feel temperatures? Detecting them was one thing, but responding to them like a human was something else, and she had no idea why a programmer would want to make him do that.

“I was created to be like a human. I can feel many things you would not expect me to feel. I am, for all intents and purposes, a human. Like you. At least, that is what he said.”

“He?” Lyra asked, but Alpha didn’t elect to answer her. His glittering, plastic eyes gleamed, and Lyra wasn’t entirely sure he was telling her the truth. He was so very humanlike, and so very alien, and so strange and exotic and not entirely right-seeming, and she didn’t know if she should feel sympathy or revulsion.

Shaking her head, Lyra cowered against the wall and put Alpha out of her mind. She stayed there for a moment, careful not to touch the burning hot pipes and metal, waiting for an opportunity. If she opened the entrance wider, she could reach up, trip Acidalia, and pull the both of them down—but she couldn’t just shoot, they’d notice her, notice the noise. Hopefully, Acidalia knew what she was doing.

Lyra waited.

Suddenly, a clatter of metal and plastic came from above. Crystal shards rained and a pipe burst, sending scalding hot water spraying throughout the corridor. Now, Lyra thought. The building rippled under stress—the noise of a blaster shot would be nothing compared to the movement of concrete and the shattering of glass.

It was easy to aim and easier to shoot with these fancy, modern laser pistols. Real guns—Underground guns—made obnoxious sounds and had bad kickback, and they felt like they were exploding in her hands every time she shot one. She’d tried to teach herself to shoot, wanting to protect herself, but she hadn’t gotten very far; Underground guns needed ammo, and they were difficult to aim. These machines, sci-fi Appalachian weapons created with both function and aesthetic in mind, were so simple.

Her hand wobbled slightly as she carved a straight line with shots. It made a buzzing noise, loud enough to hear, but still not very loud for a gun. The floor fell away, crashing down with a sound of breaking chrome. Acidalia dove through the opening, falling in the same way Lyra had. She hit the ground hard—Alpha looked apologetic, or as apologetic as a robot could—but stood up with as much dignity as Lyra expected of an Imperatrix. Bruised and bloody, yet astoundingly graceful, she looked very out-of-place.

“Let’s go,” Acidalia said quickly, tearing off down the hallway. Lyra sprinted after her, her shorter legs hurrying to catch up, and Alpha hovered along a few centimetrons off the ground. The air filled with debris and dust, and Lyra choked on her own breath.

As they reached the end, Acidalia whipped out her own gun and fired several shots into the end of the hallway. A pipe burst, and boiling-hot water sprayed onto the ground, forming a small lake of burning fluid. “Give me a lift,” she said to Alpha-24, who complied. Acidalia climbed up onto his head and stood up with her feet on his shoulders—he didn’t seem to mind—and cut down one of the wires that looped around the ceiling. The lights flickered out, but she turned her helmet’s own light on. The wire fluttered in the air conditioning for a moment, then swung down away from Acidalia and towards the water, landing in the liquid.

“If anyone tries to follow us they’ll be electrocuted,” Acidalia explained. “Don’t go near the water and don’t touch any cords. Alpha, do you know how to fire a laser pistol?”

“That would be a violation of the First Law of Robotics,” he said.

“Thought you had free will,” she murmured.

“Yes, but I still have a conscience. I choose not to hurt people.”

“You just helped us escape, potentially killing all those soldiers indirectly,” Acidalia pointed out.

“That’s different.”

“Not really,” Lyra said. Alpha didn’t look too concerned.

Acidalia sighed and apparently decided not to press the issue. She glanced behind her, then slowed her pace to a jog. Even then, Lyra struggled to follow. Alpha-24 continued to ramble, talking incessantly of ancient empires and old technology and a movie series that had ended a thousand years ago, seemingly unaware or uncaring of the danger they were in.

Well, he is immortal, Lyra thought. He probably has his consciousness backed up to some server someplace else. He’s not flesh and blood, he doesn’t get how dangerous this is…

Andromeda’s voice began to come through Acidalia’s headset again as they ran further from the center. It was filtered through a heavy layer of interference, and it was mechanical and crackling anyway even when they were in clear airspace, so it was difficult to make out her words.

Far behind them, a man screamed. It echoed through the underground corridors, animalistic, searing, and then the air smelled like burning hair and scalded flesh. Then the noise stopped, leaving a sickening silence behind.

“Someone tried to follow you,” Alpha said helpfully. Acidalia didn’t even respond to him, didn’t react at all to the fact that someone had just fallen into a horrible death. She looked almost relieved, though Lyra couldn’t imagine why.

Acidalia must have seen Lyra’s confused expression, because she added, “It wasn’t Aleskynn. If he fell in… well, people aren’t going to follow him. Aleskynn won’t follow. I mean, we weren’t close, but I don’t want her dead.”

“Oh,” Lyra said, unsure of how she should respond to that.

They continued to make their way out of the Terminal, Acidalia stopping occasionally to slash wires, burst pipes, collapse ceilings, and generally wreak havoc and make it nigh-impossible for anyone to chase them. Lyra watched, both fascinated and horrified way. It was terrifying and brilliant all at once, seeing her come up with new and innovative ways to kill people.

Alpha was complicit in her actions, letting Acidalia do whatever it took, not voicing a single protest even though by all logic he should have. His complacency broke the Laws of Robotics, but he didn’t seem to care. Apparently, as long as his finger wasn’t the one on the trigger, it didn’t count.

They finally burst out of the building in a shower of metal shards and electric sparks. It wasn’t nearly as theatrical as Lyra expected it to be; they were in the building next door, another factory for some type of plastic equipment, another home to dead-eyed workers mindlessly injecting molds with compounds. Acidalia looked lost suddenly, no longer in her element, and leadership fell to Lyra again.

“This way.” She sprinted into an elevator. “We have to get back up there. Ships can’t get down here—they can’t weave between these buildings. We need to get higher.”

Acidalia nodded and crammed herself in next to Lyra, then Alpha followed her, making the entire compartment creak. It was old and rickety and probably not completely safe, but Lyra decided not to think about that. They shot up at a million miles an hour and the floors outside became a blurry, mangled vision. Factories turned to water treatment plants and power generators, which supplied the laboratories above, filled with scientists going about their business like nothing had even happened. It all felt surreal. Ground level was a living nightmare, and these people, these suburbanite scientists, just acted like it didn't matter. They probably didn't even know.

One researcher, a woman in a pristine white coat, looked up from her incubator at the whirring elevator, then sighed and turned away, rolling her eyes. She'd probably seen the bright hair and the flash of black and been instantly annoyed; academics usually didn't take too kindly to ground-level degenerates.

Then again, nobody took too kindly to people like Lyra, ever.

Andromeda's voice crackled again in both of their headsets."We're up here on the Eastern side of the starscraper cluster. Stay where you are and-"

The entire building rattled, and the elevator stopped.

"God damn it," Acidalia muttered. Alpha-24 looked afraid, jumping backwards with a clattering of metal. "They must know where we went."

The building rocked again, and the gray tiles came up off the floors, breaking into pieces of plastic. One scientist screamed and jumped backwards, clutching her hand—she'd stabbed herself with the needle she was holding. Lab equipment—expensive looking lab equipment—fell off of the tables, breaking into pieces on the hard floor.

"What do we do?" Lyra asked.

"Follow me," Acidalia said, kicking open the elevator door. It didn't take much pressure; it had already been rattled from the quakes. The scientists around them, scattered throughout the lab, jumped aside nervously in response. They looked around wildly at one another, then at Lyra, Acidalia, and Alpha.

"Salve," Alpha said. "Ego Alpha-24-"

“Get out,” Acidalia interrupted, gesturing at the scientists. “It’s safer outside.”

“Who are you?” one of the researchers asked, narrowing her eyes. “You’re not my boss—“

Acidalia wrenched off her mask and flipped her hair over her shoulders in the most dramatic way possible. “I’m still alive, but my mother wouldn’t tell you that, would she?”

The researcher looked confused, then astonished, before bolting out of the way, dragging her colleagues with her. Acidalia turned to Lyra and smirked, but it was a serene sort of smirk that wouldn’t make sense on anyone else.

“I just lost contact with Acidalia,” Andromeda’s voice said in Lyra’s earpiece.

“She’s fine, she just took her helmet off. We’re still in the Trinity labs, wherever that is,” Lyra replied.

A different voice crackled through the microphone. “That’s where I work! Where are you?” Athena asked.

“Level 678,” Acidalia said, pulling her helmet back on.

“I know where that is!” Athena said. “That’s just above the Bio labs. Be careful, I got anthrax from walking around down there a few times.”

“Stop, Athena,” Carina sighed. “They’ll be okay, they’re not stubborn and careless like you are. There’s a balcony on the eastern side of the astrobiology lab a few floors up, you should try to get there!”

“Will do,” Acidalia said. She smiled slightly at Carina’s voice, maybe because she sounded so young and so inexperienced.

It didn’t last long; her expression went right back into stony anger when security guards burst through the door on the left side. Lyra tried to put her blaster in stun mode, but it was too late; Acidalia had already shot the lot of them by the time she raised her gun. Lyra didn’t know if they were dead or just unconscious, and she wasn’t going to ask. Alpha-24, like always, ignored the events transpiring around him.

Acidalia stepped over one of the bodies to get to the stairwell. As she thrust the heel of her boot into his arm, his flesh made a nightmarish squelching noise, and he groaned as if he was in pain. Acidalia whispered a hurried apology, then broke into a sprint for the hundredth time. Lyra had heard someplace that adrenaline should make things hurt less, but based on the sharp stitch in her side, that was a lie. She clutched at her ribs, internally begging Acidalia to please slow down.

“Have you been hit?” Acidalia asked, her eyes wide and concerned.

“No, just tired,” Lyra said, though she wasn’t too unhappy at having somebody feel worried for her for once. But that didn’t last long, either; the look was gone as quickly as it appeared.

They sprinted to the top of the staircase, sending panicked scientists running in the opposite direction, dropping lab notebooks and test tubes on the way. A scared little mouse skittered across the floor on an erratic freedom run, swishing its thin pink tail. Slippery, cloudy, pinkish-red goo leaked out of a cabinet from an overturned plastic bottle. Lyra was no expert on biomedical safety, but she suddenly understood how Athena got anthrax.

“Don’t touch that,” Acidalia said, pointing at an overturned orange waste bin marked with a spiky trefoil. Syringes and thin glass tubes spilled out at the bottom, which leaked a disgusting rainbow of multicolored fluids.

“I am immune to all biohazards,” Alpha said, kicking the wastebasket to the side and impaling several metal syringes into his foot.

“Okay,” Acidalia sighed, “don’t touch him, either.” She pulled her visor down over her face and switched some type of filter on. Lyra had no idea what the settings on these helmets were, so she set her own to the filter level that made the loudest noise in her ears. She reasoned that at least the sound let her know it was working.

Alpha, meanwhile, was taking great delight in jamming his finger into some piece of equipment and watching sparks fly off as it vibrated. “This is called a vortex!” he shouted, very unhelpfully.

Acidalia spared him an annoyed glare before turning to face the hallway ahead of them. “Be careful,” she said, more to Lyra than to Alpha. “Don’t let anything on here get near you, or on you, or close to you if you can help it. There’s a reason those women running past us were wearing those ridiculous space suits. Be as cautious as you can afford to be.”

Alpha-24 held up his charred finger. “I am burned.”

Lyra and Acidalia looked at each other, both exasperated, then set off down the laboratory. Alpha trailed them, mindlessly wandering through puddles of biological waste. Emergency alarms blared from every wall in an excruciating beep, beep, beep, like intense police sirens. The whole thing was like sensory overload, and Lyra was quickly getting a migraine, which pounded in her head with the pulse of the alarms.

Okay, she thought. I just have to get out of here, I just have to get out of here-

Acidalia pushed her behind a lab bench. She hit the ground hard and found blood trickling down her face; she'd gotten a bloody nose. Acidalia didn't seem too concerned.

"Wha-" Lyra asked. Acidalia put a finger to her lips.

"Alpha, get over here, and be quiet about it," she whispered.

Alpha-24 meandered over to the lab bench and sat down, looking completely unconcerned.

"What's wrong?" Lyra asked.

Acidalia cocked her head slightly. Lyra turned ever-so-carefully to look.

"Alestra," she whispered.