[zapdragon555]

Rudy's labored breathing hissed through his teeth as he held the gun, the barrel starting to tremble as the pressing danger began to pass. He licked his lips, everything tasting acrid and metallic, and slowly moved closer, putting himself on the other side of Terrence's bed, opposite Ronan. "Tell--" he began, his voice a rough wisp of sound. He cleared it, and tried again. "Tell me what you wanted with this android. Tell me why you took him."

He kept the gun trained on Ronan, but flicked his eyes to Terrence's form. Something inside him ached as he watched a very human pain rush through the robot's--no, Terrence's body. He'd get them out of here. Asking questions almost didn't matter, at this point, and in fact, Rudy was poised and ready to grab Terrence with his last remaining strength and run out of there as quickly as he could.

Across the desert. On foot. Slowly, the realization of their situation dawned on him, and with a renewed jerk of the gun, he snarled, "And tell me where you keep your vehicles. I'm leaving, and I'm taking him with me."

[crow]

It took everything Terrence had to stay conscious, but he fought against the aftershock of pain, struggling to hold onto the sound of Rudy's voice. He could... He could do that much, at least. He had to. He didn't understand why, exactly, but a cold leaden feeling in the pit of his stomach told him that this was important. There had been--- He'd heard gunshots---

'Tell me what you wanted with this android.'

Terrence felt his heart stop. His eyes went wide, and suddenly it was as if all sensation vanished from his body. No, it wasn't quite like that; it was as if he was suddenly outside himself somehow, still present but detached from his physical self.

Android.

The word echoed, like the pain had echoed, turning back in on itself again and again. As if to torment him. Fragments came flooding back all at once. The house... The roses... The way Rudy had cried. Waking up in that room, the first time. The body---

"No," said Terrence. Once. Softly.

Doctor Ronan turned to look at him.

The doctor smiled then, a twist of the lips that had no warmth, no kindness. It was the smile of a man who saw an opportunity. "I have no idea what you're talking about," he said. "Is this not the respected Doctor Terrenc Wu?"

He listened as Rudy made his demands, but the smile didn't leave his face. "Do as you wish. We have vans parked on the west side of the facility, in the hangar. I'm hardly in a position to stop you." But his words, like his smile, did not carry the air of a man admitting defeat.

Terrence barely heard him. He was looking at his hands. His head swam. He was looking at his hands. The hands he worked with. The hands that tapped away at the keyboard. The hands that soldered components together. The hands that tilled the garden on lazy Sunday afternoons, with the sun dappled over his fingers.

The familiar map of veins and wrinkles that he had known so well----

Not a trace. He couldn't find a trace of any of it.