You could ask yourself, do we even make a choice about who we love? We often talk about love as something beyond our control. In that way, is human love any different than the program of a machine?

—Cindra, Letter to Omega

The darkness overwhelmed me just as I reached my own door. My hand slipped off the knob as the world spun and the floor rushed up to meet me.

When I opened my eyes, I was lying on my bedroom floor. The door was closed, and Fane lay beside me, his eyes blank and unstaring.

“Fane? Are you all right?”

He was dead. No. I reached out to check for his heartbeat, remembering only as my hand hovered over his chest that he wouldn’t have one. Did he even breathe? Or pretend to? I’d so easily accepted him as human, even after I’d realized he was an artilect.

No, no, no. Shit.

I scrambled over his body to the door and peered into the hallway to see if anyone else was there. The corridor and the stairs were silent, only the faintest buzz of conversation floating up from the floor below.

Shit.

He lay on his back, arms spread, his face cherubic. His eyes were still open and oddly vacant, his jaw slack. The skin on his face not covered with stubble was smooth and firm, and yet I swore I could see tiny pores. He looked so perfectly human. I touched his cheek gently with the back of my hand.

He’s not human, Ailith. He doesn’t just wake up. Shit. What do I do?

I lay down next to him, twining my fingers with his. Maybe I could reach through his thread, if he was still…alive? Operational? How did one classify the life status of an artilect? I closed my eyes and searched for his thread, praying it wasn’t one of the dark ones.

Come on, Fane. Believe it or not, I’m not ready to lose you just yet. I feel like we’ve known each other a long time, I—

“So this your bedroom?” he whispered.

“Fane?” I must’ve aged ten years.

“Or did I die? Is this Heaven?”

“Artilects don’t go to Heaven, Fane. And in Heaven there wouldn’t be dirty underwear on the floor.”

“In mine, there would be.”

“I did think you were dead,” I admitted.

“So you just lay down next to me? Were you going to have a sneaky peek before they took me away for parts?”

“Of course not! Don’t be so crass. I was trying to find your thread and make sure you were truly dead before I stuck you in my garden as a scarecrow to frighten tomato-thieves. Give me my hand back.”

He released it, grinning.

“Seriously, though, what are you doing here? What happened? I was talking to Callum and then… Were you waiting here for me? Did you break into my bedroom? Because I already told you—”

“No,” he said, “ending up on your floor is just a happy coincidence. I came upstairs to say goodnight, and you were fainting. I caught you just as you hit the floor and dragged you in here.”

The pain in my knees seemed to agree with him. “Were you actually out of it then? Or were you awake the entire time?”

“I was awake for most of it,” he admitted. “I wanted to see what you would do with me.”

“And were you disappointed?”

“A little. I thought you would at least check if I was anatomically correct.”

I said nothing.

“Go on,” he said, “you know you want to.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Are you?” I blurted.

He laughed, a human, throaty laugh. “Of course. Ethan designed me. Although I don’t know if he made me bigger or smaller than him. Would you like to see?” He lifted the hem of his shirt.

“No thanks, I’m good.”

He pulled his shirt back down, but not before I’d glimpsed the planes of his stomach. “Are you okay? What happened?”

Fane’s an AI. Maybe he can help. “I went in to speak to Callum. Please, keep this between us, but when Callum went through the process that made us cyborgs, he swallowed an AI named Umbra. When I went to see him, Umbra spoke to me instead. She wanted to know about you.” I recounted everything she’d said. “Callum is scared of her, and honestly, so am I. Oliver is trying to figure out a way to separate them without harming Callum.” The room still seemed to spin a bit, so I sat down on my bed and leaned against the wall.

“What about Umbra?” Fanes gestured to the foot of my bed.

I nodded, and he sat down. “What do you mean?”

“Doesn’t he worry about hurting Umbra?”

“No, of course not. She’s just—”

“A machine.” He raised his eyebrows.

My cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

He brought my hand up to his lips, the way he’d done with Cindra. “It’s okay. I forget too. I thought of her as just a machine at first. Isn’t that strange? When did I get so grand?”

“You don’t seem like a machine to me,” I said quietly.

“I don’t seem like a machine to myself either. But how would I know?”

“Are you sentient, Fane?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes I think I am. I think that I…feel. That I dream. But how can I know for sure? How do you know you are?”

“I guess I don’t.” My hand was still in his, and I had no desire to move it.

“What did she do to you?”

“Nothing. She wanted to, but she’d used up all her strength by that point, I think. She just sort of breathed on me, and that was it. Do you understand what she meant, about how she would help herself?”

He looked troubled. “No. But…from what you said, she wants to be like me.” He frowned. “She’s disturbing. She shouldn’t be aware like that. When they built her kind, my design hadn’t even been conceived yet. There’s something very wrong.”

“Do you think she’s capable of doing something dangerous? Of seriously hurting Callum? Or any of us?”

“I don’t know. She shouldn’t be, and yet… Ailith? Ailith!”