"Honesty is also a foreign concept. Because, the truth, when hidden for so long, can bring about pain. And who wants that?

*

I didn't fall. Tumble. Crash. I'd been standing in the same spot just a foot from the stairs. The memory that played in my head passed over my eyes like a movie. And once it ended, I blinked and returned to reality. I pressed my hand to my chest.

Battery at sixty-five percent.

Looking ahead, down the halls, fresh memories played. Different, recent, and yet so foreign, as though they'd been repressed. Glancing at the metal rooms, I knew what was beyond their black doors. Somehow, I knew there were charging pods and nothing else; no windows, no bars. Looking towards the opposite rooms, I felt as though I'd been inside them, charging, sleeping. I stepped forward and recalled dreams filled with electrical lights and green flares.

And hands.

So many hands.

I took in a breath, forcing myself to look ahead. "Wendy," I whispered quietly to the air. She was there, and she needed me. There wasn't time to worry about memories I couldn't pinpoint.

As I walked forward, I told myself they couldn't possibly be mine. It could've been my sensors picking up on frequencies that didn't belong to me; dormant nightmares from the droids above. Or, they might have been from the bots below, the ones who wandered these dark halls. Shaking my head free of the distant screaming, I felt sorry for them, but not enough to care.

I only cared about the girl they took from me.

"Scan vicinity," I said quietly to myself, forcing my systems to run a manual check of the floor one more time. Six Androids flickered over my left, beyond the rooms and halls I couldn't outright see without a digital layout. The other fourteen were scattered ahead of me, to the right, and farther off than I thought. But as I looked forward once more, down the long hall, I knew Wendy's pinging signal was dead ahead, center room.

I titled my head and locked on to her once more. "I'm coming, Lost Girl."

My sensors shut off, my vision cleared, and my feet took me forward. As light as my body could move, I ran without making much noise, little sound. Without the need to breathe, no one should hear me. And if broken bots couldn't sync like I thought, they wouldn't see me coming.

I can save her.

I moved faster. Harder. My hands slid across shut doors as I zig-zagged passed the columns that met the short ceiling. Bumping my shoulders against the steel didn't stop me.

I'm getting you out of here, Wendy.

Swipe left. Dodge right. The hall felt endless. Doors after doors, flickering, dead-lights. I zeroed in on her signal, watching it flash within my computer's main eye. The other light moved in—the droid. Closer. Closer. Too close.

Get the fuck away from her!

My knee popped as I pushed myself harder. An uncomfortable buzz shot up my leg. But I wouldn't stop. She was right there. I knew it. I could feel it. And once I passed that final pillar, right as the hall ended, I saw her; my baby sister.

I should've smiled, felt relief. I wanted to run to her, grab her, and get her out of this place. But I couldn't.

Wendy sat in the center of an open room. The opposite halls connected to it, like lines in a bee's complicated hive. I came to a halt, hands trying to grab the walls, and I locked onto her red, tear-filled eyes. The way she looked at me, the way her brows pulled together and her pale cheeks turned red, killed me.

Wendy...

She wasn't alone.

"Come on, little girl." A droid kneeled before her, hands covering hers. I could only see the back of his head. "Can't you see I'm your brother? Me? I'm Javier."

Pressure fell on my chest as I heard him speak, listened to his voice. The volume, the pitch, the slight accent at the end of his words. A part of me felt sick as Wendy's eyes slid down to him before looking at me again.

"Look at me." The droid lifted her hands and put it against his face. "There's no difference, right? Same lines. Same folds. A perfect copy."

The buzz from my leg traveled further. It slid up my chest, passed my ribs, and stopped at my heart. I sucked in a breath, a hiss, and squeezed my eyes shut for only a second.

"Battery unstable. Signal sent to Bionics Corp."

"Peter..." The sound of Wendy's voice pulled me back and as I leaned forward, I opened my eyes. And wanted to scream.

I wasn't sure what I thought I'd see when the droid turned around. Wasn't sure how I'd react. I knew I'd rush it, yes it was a possibility. It was all to save my sister.

But as it stood and turned to look at me, I wasn't expecting to see me. It looked like me. My face. My hair. Its body, its build, everything was an exact replica of my entire being. And when he smiled, those lines, that crinkle, were all mine, too.

I stumbled forward one step. And another.

"I knew you weren't talking to me, little girl," he said.

That voice is... my voice.

I tried to stand up straight, but every part of me hurt. My sensors sparked like fireworks, my circuits sent signals all over my body.

The droid smirked and shook his head, glancing down at Wendy with curious eyes. "Did you think he'd come to get you as fast as he did? I didn't think so. I'm impressed."

Wendy didn't move. Her hands, still gripping the folds of her jeans, shook as she looked at me. Fresh tears slid down her face. And slowly, she shook her head.

"Well—" The droid sighed as he lifted his head towards the ceiling. "—even though he's here, it doesn't matter. He's clueless. I thought Mary would've filled him in by now, so he'd understand and make this easy on me."

"W... What?" I tried to shake away the feeling, but couldn't. Electricity moved under my skin, burning hot. Grimacing, I tried to keep my focus on the android. "Who are you? How... how are you...?"

"How am I? Oh, I'm fine, thanks for asking." His head came down and his smile left his face immediately. His arms, moving slowly, folded in front of him. Then he laughed. "Oh wait, you mean, how do I look exactly like you? Right?"

I nodded slowly, moving right. I could circle him, it was the only way.

"Like I said, Mary should've told you. I love her compassion, really I do, but shit, she coddles you. How are you supposed to survive out in the real world if you don't understand what you are?"

As I moved to one side, he slid behind Wendy and then shifted the opposite way. Like mirrored reflections, we circled each other. Yet, as he looked so collected, I felt uneasy. Each step was harder to take than the last.

Wendy took in a deep, shaky breath. "Peter, I...."

I looked at her, just as the android spoke. "I think it's obvious what I am," he said.

Looking back at him, I narrowed my eyes as I kept moving. "Obviously," I said.

"But do you know the extent? Do you think you know why?"

I stopped moving, staring at him, trying to spot a difference. Any would put me at ease. Where's his Bionics symbol? I observed him. Where's his brand?

"You don't," the droid laughed. "If she hasn't told you, there's no way you could know. It's sort of... an inside thing."

My eyes slid over to the other side of his face, down to his neck—no brand, no symbol. When I looked into his eyes, I noticed the next difference. My eyes were brown, like deep honey, and his... were dark red, like pools of blood. Staring into them, I forced my feet to move again. So did he. "Is that why you took my sister? Because of an inside thing?" I asked him, glancing at Wendy. "You're the one who needed to see me, right? The droid from the parking lot."

His lip twitched up into a smile and I felt sick. I did that. "That was me." He shrugged. "I crashed her school's assembly, I snatched her and put her in the van. All me, brother."

Gritting my teeth, I suppressed a growl. "I'm not your brother..."

"Oh?" The droid stopped moving and laughed. His hand went up into his hair and he shook the dark strands. He laughed, a deep sound, almost husky, and glanced up at me with sultry, red eyes. I watched his tongue slide along his bottom lip, over his top teeth.

And I took a step back.

Fuck me... shit.

"Maybe you're right." He rolled his head along his shoulders. "I'm not your brother. None of the Replicas are siblings to our base code. Every part of us, every microscopic, cybernetic nano-fiber is an exact copy of the droid we look like, down to the hearts in our bodies and the 'brains' in our heads."

As he tapped his temple with two fingers and approached me, I realized what he meant. The screams, the hands, the memorized layout of the rooms I'd never seen... were they his?

"So yeah, you're right." The droid moved behind Wendy and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I'm not your brother, not your cousin, not a relative at all."

"What are you then?" I whispered my question as my computers processed what he'd said.

"Little girl, tell him." The droid moved his face next to Wendy's. I watched his fingers gently squeeze her arms. "Tell him what I am..."

My hands formed fists at my sides. I looked from him to my sister, and slowly, I shook my head. "Wendy..."

"Peter... he's—" The droid gave another squeeze, and Wendy yelped before she could continue. "—his name is Axe, and he's...."

Signals sparked in my vision. The droids were moving and fast. Footsteps echoed around us like an incoming storm.

"He's you."