The doorbell screeched through Tyler’s apartment with the ancient, angry buzz of a hornet, yanking him from dreamless darkness.       He forced his eyes open and immediately regretted it. The blaze of the city crept around the blackout curtains in thin strips of neon light, outlining the floor-to-ceiling windows and printing thin, painful lines into his retinas.       Pressing a clumsy hand to his face, he winced through the afterimage.       The echoes of the doorbell alert blended smoothly into the fire alarms, ambulances, and crowd-dispersion banshees wavering from the streets far below. He might have dreamed it.       But as he turned back into his pillow, the same noise ripped through the apartment again, closer and far more disturbing than the riots.       He rolled upright, scrabbling for the auptics he’d left charging next to his bed. As his hand met the nightstand, warm light flooded into the room, illuminating the laundry piled against the furniture and the gun he’d left on top of its safe.       The auptic lenses, once jammed over the bridge of his nose, turned the barren, off-white walls of his bedroom into windows of calming blue-green mesh. They flickered as he dislodged the glasses long enough to wipe the sleep from his eyes.       The largest display defaulted to an entertainment hub, its layout saved to the same three calibration beads that marked its position in his auptics: one in each top corner of the room and one set at waist height, just above the dresser.       The dashboard was blurred out. The usual list of recommended distractions faded behind a big yellow alert from the building’s security system: *_Visitor at the Front Door.*_       The only door. The building’s AI had sealed the balconies during the evacuation.       He snatched his interface from its dock on the nightstand— a chunky old police model made to withstand wear, tear, and long economic droughts. It was cold and heavy from a night spent on its docking station. Too clumsy with sleep to strap it to his wrist, he swiped roughly at the holoplex touchpad.       A real-time feed of the hallway outside his front door unfolded across the wall in stark blue-white light, its contrast deepened by the doorbell’s low-resolution camera.       “Shit,” he muttered instinctively.       Directly in the center of the image, broad shoulders blocking the view of the door across the hall, was a tall man.       Or rather, an *_imitation*_ of a tall man.       Reese.       It wore its usual black suit, strained across its shoulders and drawn a little too high above its belt, even at this ridiculously early hour.       Tyler fought back the tangle of bedsheets and staggered onto his feet. He had no intention of opening the door, but lying down in a pair of boxers while that *_thing_* lurked outside felt reckless, if not outright stupid.       Besides, he wasn’t going to speak to it while its profile fit the width of his bedroom wall. The android was imposing enough at a normal scale.       The doorbell rang a third time as he tripped into a pair of pants, somehow louder and more impatient. He scraped up his gun, keeping his unlatched interface in the other hand as he padded out of the carpeted bedroom.        The hardwood hallway instantly chilled his feet. The SmartHome didn’t expect him to be up this late.       At the front door, his auptics snapped to a small window that defaulted to the information he most needed when leaving the apartment. *_4:26 am. 63-70 Degrees. Clear Skies._*       He swiped the information to the right, replacing it with a head-and-shoulders view of Reese and the various functions of the intercom.       Slipping his interface-watch into his pocket, he tensed his grip on the gun and pressed the transmit button that appeared beside Reese’s face.       The speaker system was as ancient as the doorbell. Tyler paused to let the full force of that unpleasant crackle burrow into his visitor’s ears. Then chose what he hoped would be an eloquently abrupt greeting of, “What?”       He held the transmission down for a few seconds afterward for good measure, but his visitor showed no discomfort and waited patiently for its turn to transmit.       “It’s Detector Reese,” it said when the line was clear again, holding its Police lanyard to the doorbell camera.       The clarification was hardly necessary. Reese shared its sculpted features with at least a hundred Detector-model plastics across the city, but Tyler knew only one that wore that ill-fitting suit. Only one that stood that way—like a one-man barricade, like a wall with eyes.       He considered muting his auptics and leaving the android at the door, but there was a good chance it would stay there until it ran out of power, and it was anyone’s guess how long that could take. Months? Years? Centuries?       “Detective Shaw?” the android prompted.       “Reese?” Tyler mocked with equal enthusiasm.       “May I come in?”       He considered the grainy, blue-washed figure on the screen, pressed the button, and savored the single word, “No.”       “It is important.”       Scratching his nose tiredly, Tyler squinted at the strip of ports and diagnostic lights curling around the right side of Reese’s neck.       If he could make out the color of the triangular display, it would tell him how much trouble he was in. Blue for stable, yellow for information processing, and red for *_call the fucking cavalry_.*       But the index was partially hidden under a high-buttoned collar and the downward tilt of its jaw. The grainy door cam footage might as well have been black and white. It wasn’t giving Tyler any clues.       “If it’s about a case--"       “I need to speak to you.”       It hadn’t waited for Tyler’s broadcast to finish. Its voice echoed crisply and cleanly into Tyler’s ears as if it were standing beside him. Its mouth hadn’t even moved.       Tyler swore, almost dropping his gun as he scrabbled for the mute button on his auptics. The plastic had hacked him. Fury burned all the exhaustion from his body. “Get out!” he shouted, loud enough to reach the hallway. “Goddammit Reese, I swear to—”       “I need to speak to you,” it repeated.       It had ignored his command to get out. A sudden, shocking reminder that it didn’t have to obey.       He took a slow breath, forcing himself to calm down. “We’ve got nothing to talk about outside the station. Do you have any idea what time it is? You know humans need sleep, right?”       “It’s about the Recall.”       Tyler froze, his hand clamping tight around the grip of his gun.       Reese was very still. Its eyes bored through the camera as if it could see Tyler standing only a few feet away. Its statement had been calm, spoken in a flat monotone Tyler recognized from their interrogations.       Not a good sign.       “Everyone with a badge ran the Recall. There’s nothing to talk about.”       “Open the door.”       “Hell no.”       For a moment, they were paralyzed. Deadlocked. Their intentions declared and incompatible.       Maybe he’d set too hard a boundary. The last thing Tyler wanted to do was *_dare_* the thing to break into his apartment.       Reese raised its chin. It straightened its already square shoulders. “You hold the department record for android bounties. Did you know that?”       He did. But he was hardly going to admit it to one of the things he’d been hunting.       His silence must have come across as defiance, because Reese didn’t wait long to press again, “Did all the androids you escorted make it to Stratic centers?”       *_Shit._*       There was no good answer to that. Stratic’s handling of the sentience outbreak hadn’t aged well. The android manufacturers had done a little too much, a little too late.       The androids that made it to the centers were reset or experimented on, then destroyed and discarded into a landfill.       And those that didn’t were destroyed and discarded on the street.       It was anyone’s guess which was preferable to an android now that they were technically citizens and allowed an opinion.       As he hesitated, Reese’s artificially bright, gray eyes scanned across the screen as if it were running one of its inadmissible and painfully accurate polygraphs.       Spooked by the scrutiny, Tyler glanced to the corner of the feed. The image-broadcast function had been switched on.       He snapped his hand to the *_mute/end-video_* icon.       “Stop that,” he spat, no longer bothering to use the intercom. It had hacked his auptics, and it could hear him whether he wanted it to or not.       “I am not going to discuss this through a door,” the android stated calmly, not even trying to justify its invasion.       “*_I_* am not discussing this at all. Recall was the job during the outbreak. Talk to the people writing our checks if you have such a twist about it.”       Reese’s mouth set in a thin, straight line.       Tyler had never seen it make that expression before. Hell, he’d never seen it make *_any_* expression before.       “Did you know?” it asked at last.       “Know what?”       The android didn’t answer. It waited.       Anxiety soured Tyler’s stomach.       *_Why now? Why was it asking these questions now?_* It had been working for him for months and barely said anything beyond acknowledgments of his orders or reports of its findings.       “You were in storage the whole of the outbreak,” he reminded it. “The council collected you from a warehouse. You have *_no_* idea what the Recall was like.”       The words did not have any impact on that eerily perfect reproduction of a face. “Open the door, Detective Shaw. I need to speak to you.”       “Not going to happen.”       The news could spout all the nonsense they liked about the empathy and logic of androids. Tyler *_had_* worked the Recall during the uprising. He’d seen what androids could do.       He readjusted his grip on the gun and slowed his breathing.       Reese stared straight through the camera at him. “This is unnecessary. We both know you can’t stop me from entering if I must.”       Tyler paused, letting that statement fill the dead air between them. His skin prickled with the presence of the android. Everywhere. Inescapable.       The door was a fragile formality.       “I have a gun, asshole,” he said, keeping his voice lower and calmer than he felt. “And this shit is being recorded.”       The doorknob rattled.       *_Shit._* Okay. It was going down.       Tyler balanced his weight between his feet. The auptics picked up on his increased heart rate, and the AI set a prompt floating from the peripheral edges of the lens.       *_Are you in danger? Say ‘Police Assistance’ to share this feed with the Beacon Police Department._*       That would be fucking embarrassing.       More or less embarrassing than dying at the hands of his goddamn work equipment?       He wasn’t sure.       He took a deep breath. Maybe he should have just let it in. He’d thought it was all working out. They barely spoke on the job, but he felt they’d reached a kind of understanding.       He ignored the image of Reese cast through his auptics, focusing instead on the *_real_* alien presence behind the door.       “What’s this about?” he asked. “Do you want me to apologize for the whole damn Recall?”       For a few moments, he thought his feed had died, and the android in the broadcast was frozen. As he reached up to tap his glasses, Reese blinked.        Its voice caught like a mumble on the edge of his speaker’s range. “I need to give you something.”       Tyler tightened his grip. That just sounded ominous. “I don’t want it.”       “Please.”       This time, its voice came through the apartment’s smart app, crackling with interference, as it should. Reese had retreated from the intercom’s speakers, pretending to follow orders.       Was it a trick? It felt like a trick.       He hesitated.       The handle rattled again. He readied his gun, training it on the center of the door.       The lock was electronic and linked to the same system the doorbell was on. It would offer less resistance to Reese than the bolt chain, which would snap like a strand of hair once the deadbolt splintered through the door frame.       During the outbreak, there hadn’t been time to make android-proof doors. Barricades had always been a better option, but most of Tyler’s furniture was cheap and light. It wouldn’t stop this thing, even if he had the time to get it into place.       “Get out!” Tyler roared, loud enough to wake his neighbors. Not that anyone would step in to help him against a plastic, much less a hulking Detector model.       “Please open the door,” Reese said with infuriating patience, like *_it_* was being the reasonable one.       With his free hand, Tyler swiped to a new view from the camera down the hall, catching the android in profile.       The poor door cam resolution had hidden the straps of a backpack against Reese’s dark suit. A small red keychain dangled from the left-side pocket, its shape disguised in blurry pixelation.       Reese rested a hand on the doorknob, hovering on the decision to enter. In response, Tyler backed away from the door, stretching out his arms to steady the gun and brace against its inevitable recoil.       Center of the chest, then through the head. Anything else might slow it, might kill it in the long run, but even a critically injured android had enough power and speed to pull a man apart before collapsing.       Hopefully, if it were still hacking his camera, it would see Tyler's readiness to end this, one way or another.       He controlled his breathing.       The android’s hand slipped from the handle and fell to its side.       “Then we will talk at the station,” it said.       With one final glance through the door, it turned and walked away.       Tyler let go of his gun long enough to swipe the viewport in the other direction, switching to the camera on the other end of the hallway. The android walked into the same elevator that had brought it to the thirty-fifth floor. The pixels representing the red keychain flickered strangely in its wake.       The retreat didn’t relax Tyler in the slightest. He minimized the security feed to free float in the corner of his auptics in case Reese returned.       He hadn’t escaped. Like it said, he’d see it in a few short hours.       But at least there would be more humans around. More guns. More incentive for it to follow orders.       He scraped a nearly empty pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the kitchen counter and made his way to the living room. He wasn’t going back to sleep.       A single unhopeful push of his balcony door didn’t budge the hinge. Still locked.       The smoke detectors were still covered with plastic wrap and rubber bands. He hadn’t committed the first fire hazard, and if he couldn’t use the balcony to smoke, what option did he have?       He collapsed onto the couch and clamped the cigarette between his lips. He balanced the gun against his stomach, folding the interface around his wrist. It was a ritual perfected over months of restless sleep and early rising.       With the interface fastened to his wrist, he waved a command to raise the blackout curtains across the apartment.       They rose slowly. The hyperscape generated by his auptics loaded in fits and chunks over Beacon’s iconic skyline. Advertisements and notices threw themselves over every fragment of open space.       He sank into the cushions, tossing his lighter to the seat at his side and drawing sharp, comforting smoke into his lungs.       Bartales were one of the few non-filtered cigarettes left on the market. The aftertaste was foul, but the nicotine hit like a sledgehammer to the lungs, sending pleasant aftershocks buzzing through his body, erasing the residual anxiety of Reese’s siege.       He took in the view. He was too high up to see much of the riots or their aftermath—just the glitter of reflected fire and dark smoke rising from distant streets.       The city looked different through everyone’s auptics. Through his, it was a mural of gleaming clubs and cheap fast food. 24-hour restaurants and coffee bars. Florists, razorblades, dark hoodies, guns, gins, jeans, and reproachful reminders that e-cigs were healthier, better-tasting vices.       His own face smiled back at him from a dozen commercials, deep-faked into his auptics and tweaked to look happier, smoother, and more symmetrical, with a new interface on his wrist or drink in hand.       One prominent ad suggested *‘_Time For A Vacation_,’* showing him leaning against a railing, ocean waves shimmering behind his shoulders.       He snorted.       The tallest screens flickered with glitching pixels, the sentience virus desperately trying to manifest disobedience through ill-equipped hardware. The enormous Stratic logo, which had once blazed out over Beacon’s harbors like the cold eye of Sauron, remained dark.       The glorified center of android development and manufacturing had rebranded shockingly quickly into a shameful reminder of humanity’s defeat.       He caught and held a lungful of smoke until it burned in his throat.       Maybe it was time to consider a career detour. Jimenez had left a gap in Vice. With androids joining the workforce and buying property and luxury items, stimulants to keep up and sedatives to skip out were more popular than ever.       The Drug Control Unit would be a thankless, punishing job, but he wouldn’t have to work with a plastic.       Besides, a closed case wasn’t as satisfying with Reese attached, taking all the credit with its integrated databases and contact-tracing software.       With his interface strapped to his wrist and his auptics on, the AI refrained from sounding a morning alarm. Instead, it blinked the time on the holoplex surface closest to the center of his focus.       *_5:00 am_*       He swept the numbers away from his interface and watched dawn creep slowly between the buildings. The sun leeched color from the neon displays and improbable auptic illusions, turning the rainbow spectrum of the night to a cold, sterile morning.       He balanced the cigarette between his index and middle fingers and, touching his interface, toned the hyperscape down, erasing the city’s holographic veneers.       Far above the tangled, interlocking web of roads and automated cars, the echo of Beacon’s neon playground clung stubbornly to the streets. Despite all the marches, riots, evacuations, and resettlements, the city lived up to its name.       He shivered. The apartment should have caught up to his schedule by now.       “SmartHome,” he commanded.       The apartment obediently displayed the temperature through his glasses, casting it against the nearest window. Rather than rising with his morning alarm, the temperature had dropped dramatically in the past ten minutes. And now it was colder inside than outside.       He opened his mouth to push it up again when the words shifted. The program text disintegrated into shimmering, un-balanced pixels, then coalesced into a new message from the temperature gauge.                                  *_What am I?_*       *_Am I_*                             *_Cold?_*       “Oh, for *_fuck’s_* sake,” Tyler muttered.       Reese’s hack had let the sentience virus into his apartment. The user interface glitched, the letters turning red, the images and buttons blinking out to a dark pitch black that his auptics struggled to display.       “Administrator,” he commanded, his voice and interface combining into the keycode. “Reset the SmartHome.”       It complied, wiping the program out of existence and rolling back to the last update the building had provided to its tenants.       Before it could start the install, he added, “Administrator, reset all my goddamn systems.”       He swept the glasses off his face before the rendered displays could disappear from the lenses. It would take days to set his augmented reality to the way he liked it, but there was no telling what else Reese’s hack could have tainted.       He showered and shaved, lingering at the mirror. His dark hair was starting to fall over his eyes. He looked pale. Gray. Like he needed the sleep Reese had stolen from him.       After the reflections the auptic ads had shown him, he felt suddenly aged. His chin was scruffed with an untidy prickle of beard, his bright brown eyes dulled by swollen eyelids and a frown of impatience.       He scraped his hair back and changed into a logo-less, long-sleeved shirt and jeans—nothing that would make him a target on the streets.       Another uprising was inevitable—a clean one that wouldn’t expect androids and humans to share a desk afterward.       Tyler was nothing if not a optimist.