The tox storm came earlier than forecasted this time.

I convinced GMD to stay inside with me - my protocols, blah blah blah, my programming requires so and such, I can't let you out of my sight or my morality core will explode, yada yada yada. It seemed to work.

To be honest, I just don't want him to throw himself into Death's arms again. I've heard enough sounds of his corpse crunching to last my entire warranty period. I can't witness another bout of delirious, near-death rambling from him about water.

And it's nice here, for some reason, to huddle up with him in the tiny thermal chamber. If I stare at the Cocoa-Fix® steam rising out of his mug, if I count the little grey bugs dancing under the lone flickering lightbulb, I can almost ignore the clawing from outside.

The tox storm grows relentless, it pounds away at 20 centimeters of solid steel and fiberglass. Disembodied voices float inside like contagion.

GMD notices blinking lights on my display panel.

"You hear them too, huh?" He gestures outside.

"Do they...speak?"

"Only sometimes." GMD puts his ear up against the door, "That's why I'm the only one who works the top floor shift. Everyone else dips out when they start hearin' the voices."

He sounds oddly proud of that, as if he's managed to befriend the storm.

3:20 pm

I watch him fiddle with the small white gadget using a plastic spoon. He's trying to get the battery cover open, but still has a long struggle ahead of him.

What is that thing?

> Internal query generated...

> Image search...

> 0 matches found

Dang, this thing must be really old. It looks so outdated that I don't think even TRISS can tap into it. If anything, it looks pre-Sanctorium.

There's logos on it in a language I don't understand.

"Is this another one of your contrabands?" I blurt out. I know he's about to jump ceiling-high and bristle at me because I'm too smart for his liking, but it's a risk I'm willing to take.

"Yeah." He huffs, "I got it from Nanaya."

"Who's Nanaya?"

"Nanaya' business."

Good ol' GMD moment.

He tugs on its antenna and fiddles with the dials, the thing crackles to life. An alert tickles at the periphery of my vision: new visual frequency detected. It's one I didn't have to use before.

I switch on the radio wave camera to see ripples dancing across my vision. Voices from far away tear rifts through the air on mechanical impact, and words melt into sounds melt into motion into kinetic molecular energy that translates itself into music again. I'm looking at a song from beyond the Bleak Lands. I don't understand words, but I understand colour. This song is the colour of waking up.

(Maybe my senses are jumbled again?)

"What is this?"

"FM radio stations." GMD flicks through the channels, "This thing is old enough to pick up Bleak Land transmissions."

"Where did you get this?"

He makes an annoyed "tsk" sound, "So many questions. What are you, interrogating me? I scavenged it from a scrapyard out in Niemandsland."

Finders keepers I guess.

We sit for a little between the low whistle of a kettle drone and that mesmerizing tune beckoning me away. GMD sits on a stack of crates with his knees pushed against his chest, trying his best to finish the dregs of a cup of Cocoa-Fix® long gone cold. Then the scratching and pounding outside start once more.

"They’re still trying to get in." I look to GMD.

He reaches over to turn up the radio volume. The dance of radio waves grows wilder until it swallows up the noise outside.

"Is this how you spend your hours?"

He doesn't answer me. The radio station jumps between different voices, different colours. I catch one that belongs to a woman, one who I imagined to be the colour of velvet cake.

GMD must've noticed I'm leaning closer to hear her voice better. He seems amused - hey, does he think androids can't appreciate music?

"That's Madaraki Ishiko." He tilts his head at the poster, "It's been, what, seventy years? Can't believe they're still playing her music..."

"Who runs these stations?"

"Anyone who's still alive out in the Bleak Lands. Insurrectionists, Hailstone Monsters, they've all got their own channels. But since some broadcasts were entirely run by drones before the Old War, they're still broadcasting to this day."

Just...entire radio towers full of sun-bleached bones and machines, stuck in music from almost a century ago, playing to the wastelands as their only audience. Like it's screaming out for the snow to please please remember that someone existed, someone liked this song. And at one point, humans as a collective species decided they liked this song so much they'll turn it into electromagnetic energy to outrun the wind.

Świnoujście.

What was that voice?

I miss my home.

It's coming from the radio.

I can hear the smile creeping up in Renfield's voice, "It's finally here."

"What?"

"The tox storm." He swats my hand away before I could change the channel, "Sometimes it manages to tap into the shortwave stations, hijacks it, then tries to talk through it to anyone who would listen."

> Warning: potential infohazard detected

"You shouldn't listen to this. It could hurt you, it could say awful things. You're not supposed to-"

"That's what makes it fun."

I really don't understand him. Why is he doing this?

"If you don't like it, cover your robot ears or whatever." He tries to shove me away from the radio, "I gotta hear what the storm has to say."

Ay, drogi Boże, it's so cold here. Didn't want to come to Świnoujście, didn't want to kill anyone.

I shouldn't be listening to this.

> Warning: morality core instability detected. Interference 17%...

It's a cold, dry voice. Synthetic snow and radioactive dust and grey clouds poured down some dessicated throat to make it speak again, so that when it speaks it's like the Bleak Land wind is cutting through your face. But the man on the other end sounded young, even younger than Renfield.

I could have stayed home, if I had a home to stay in. Then the snow ghosts came and I don't anymore have a home, dziewczyno. Everything in the Old World is gone. Washed off this planet.

Flickering memories of the dead man. Hearth. Pillow. Dinner. Is it weird to want things I've never experienced before? I can feel its voice crawling behind my eyes. Is that the tox storm speaking to me, or the corpse's last thoughts?

I come to the snow, because nowhere else is there left to live. A pint used to be 7 złotych, but now not all the gold in the world will buy me a drink.

It breaks into quiet sobbing that falls in sync with the snow.

> Interference 21%...

Let me in, dziewczyno, just one drink...I'm so thirsty. Just one. L̸et ̶me ̸in...

There's that familiar plea for water. I can't stop listening to it, even if I know all I need to do is to shut down. How much of this voice is the swarm, and how much came from a poor corpse's memories I cannot tell. It terrifies me to even fathom there is some form of consciousness in that storm.

Something makes me want to wrench out my interocitor, throw it to the floor and cry alongside him.

> Warning: psych-core buffer overflow in 10, 9, 8...

I wasn't built to handle this much sadness. Not a single protocol in me contains instructions for a broken voice trickling out of a radio, or a mind stuck in ancient recursion loop like endless music broadcasts. My system compensates by overheating, drawing power away from all external functions.

Click.

Renfield shuts off the radio.

He looks over me, with my head tucked under four arms and another two hugging my knees close to my chest. I can't tell what he's thinking, I do see his hands shaking a little as he puts the radio away.

"Is that what you wanted to hear?" I ask. Artificial neutrality in my voice comes as easy as seeing.

"Not quite, but...didn't know that had you spooked."

What's so surprising about that? He knows I have a set of fear subroutines.

"I thought you'd get scared by imminent dangers - blighters burrowing, snipers, that sorta thing."

"I...I wasn't scared."

Did I just stumble over my words? Which part of my programming is responsible for that?!

What did he want to hear in that static chaos of scattered neurons? Another long-forgotten song? News from the freshly battle-slaughtered? Or was it someone's voice?

> Psych-core stabilized. Restarting morality core...

I nudge Renfield a little, "Can I listen to her more?"

He doesn't need me to elaborate who I meant by she. I get up to pour him another cup of Cocoa-Fix® as Madaraki Ishiko's music fills the room once more. There's warm, there's velvet cake, and there's a sound from long ago that makes me think of little white flowers.