They sat in silence opposite each other, the girl alternating between crossing her arms and staring stonily at him and pacing up and down with a thoughtful look at him. All the while she stole glances at him, glances which he caught sometimes but didn’t notice most of the time, too absorbed in analyzing the situation to care much about what was happening in the room. Assault. Broken the law. Criminal. Can never go home. He blinked. Nothing was making any sense.

Finally, the girl sat down in front of him, interrupting his thought processes. She looked a little sympathetic, but her eyes remained hard and guarded. “So what’s your name?” she asked carefully.  Sunggyu looked at her.

Your name is Sunggyu. “Sunggyu,” he replied. “And you are…?”

“Hyoyeon,” the girl answered. “Back there… I… thanks for saving me,” she added, her voice drastically lower and her tone a little grudging. “Why did you do it?”

“Excuse me?” Sunggyu blinked at her. Why did you save her? asked the voice in his head as she repeated the question. His mind searched through his memory for a suitable answer, one that was logical and made sense to him, but he found nothing. Nothing but a strange feeling inside his gut, one that he had never experienced before and could not name even if he tried. Hyoyeon was looking at him curiously, but he could not summon up an answer. “I… I don’t know,” he finally managed.

She nodded. “Do you know what those Droids were? Back there?” she asked.

A question he could answer. “Rogue Droids,” he replied. To his surprise she smiled, her eyes upturning into half crescents as she regarded him with an amused look.

“Oh Sunggyu,” she shook her head laughingly. “The only Rogue Droid here is you.”

Sunggyu stared at her, his mind whirring painfully in his head. You. Rogue Droid. Lawbreaker. Criminal. Can never go home. He had never experienced such bewilderment, such confusion in his life. His mind could not keep up with the unfamiliar words. He had never had these words enter his subconscious, but now it seemed that they were here to stay, twisting and tumbling and burying themselves deeper and deeper into him, until he was sure that he and them were one of the same.

“I don’t understand,” he looked up at her. He felt something shift within him, felt something dislocated, and then a thump in his chest had him jerking forward, a loud gasp  emitting from his throat. Hyoyeon bent over him, though she did not touch him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, her long hair tickling his cheek.

“I don’t know,” he gasped. “I don’t know.” His mind was whirring, and he could feel it growing hotter and hotter. He was aware of the strange thumping in his chest. “Distressing,” he cried out, as another pang ripped through his body. “So distressing.” He was shuddering now. Overdrive. Lawbreaker. I am breaking down. Criminal.

“You’re in pain,” Hyoyeon said, her voice hushed and disconcerted.

“Pain,” he repeated, his voice trembling with the unstoppable movement of his body. “Pain.” There was a final thump from within him and then the world faded black.

Dim light. Darkness. The sound of machines whirring in the background. Dim light. Darkness. The faint mechanical buzz growing louder with every passing second. An irritating squeal of a drill right beside his ear. Dim light. The sound of a plug being pulled. A snapping sensation in his neck. The feel of cold air against his fingertips. Darkness.

A screen appeared before his vision, blue figures and numbers staring accusingly at him, flickering too fast for him to read or even register. A whirring sensation in his head. A green light flashing on screen, and then the feeling of all the numbers and figures entering his mind, infiltrating his system with their rigid programs. His eyes snapped open. He was staring up into the brilliant white light that was a ceiling a mere two feet from his face.

Breathe, said a voice in his head, neither male nor female and devoid of any emotion. He did as instructed, feeling the air enter his lungs and exit. Blink. He obeyed. Move. He lifted an appendage at his side, staring at the hand at the end of it. Your name is Sunggyu. You are a Droid.

“My name is Sunggyu,” he repeated. “I am a Droid.”

The wall to his right slid open, and there was a faint humming sound. The surface on which he had been lying on shifted, and then he was slid out into beyond the walls. He sat up, looking out at his settings; a row of similar looking pods surrounding him in a cylindrical tower seemingly made of glowing fluorescent blue light, more pods overhead and beneath him. The occupants above him were being slid out in the same manner, and he watched as the figures began sitting up around him.

“Today is your birthday,” said the voice, only this time magnified. Sunggyu watched the figures looking around them, and knew that it was not only him hearing it. “Welcome to Nea Pragmaton.”

Sunggyu woke up screaming.

“Who am I?” Hyoyeon asked him when he came to again. He groaned, rubbing a hand to his forehead, where little pinpricks of electricity were stabbing at him internally.

“Hyoyeon,” he replied.

“Who are you?”

“Sunggyu.”

“What are you?”

“I’m a Droid. I’m a machine built by machines.” His gaze met hers and she nodded, biting her lip slightly.

“And what happened?” she pursued. He was aware that he was lying on something soft and comfortable, more comfortable than he had ever felt in his life. He was aware that his surroundings were nothing like his home, where everything was clean and orderly, sterile even. The rug draped over his legs and the piles of bound documents on the floor before him were evidence of a life that he had never imagined ever existed.

“I short circuited,” he answered. “My thoughts were not those programmed beforehand, and my system could not handle them. I short circuited. I don’t know what else happened. What else happened?” he asked her. In reply she handed him a small hand-held mirror.

“Look,” was all she said. He took the object from her and looked into it. He was looking at himself, but somehow he knew that he wasn’t looking at himself. The figure in the mirror had the same facial features as him, still had the electric glow behind his brown irises, but his skin, usually pale and devoid of colour, was darker and somehow more flushed. He looked over at Hyoyeon and realized that his skin was now the same shade as hers, if not a little darker. She crouched down beside him, pressing a hand to his chest.

He could feel the pressure from her hand, strong yes unsure at the same time, against him, and then he felt the faint thump of something beneath her fingers. He held his breath, and slowly realized that there was something beating beneath his skin, beating steadily and rhythmically beneath his bones. “What happened?” he asked, looking questioningly back at her.

“You short circuited, yes,” her eyes bore into his intently, “and it jump started your dormant heart. This beating, this is your heart.” She patted his chest, then got to her feet and scooped a document off the floor, flipping pages furiously

“My heart,” he whispered. But I’m a Droid. We don’t have hearts. It’s what makes us different from you humans. We are designed to be better than you, to not be trifled by little things such as emotions. We are designed to be flawless.  As he repeated the words out loud, he was aware of another voice inside his head, one that sounded distinctly like him. And yet here you are with a beating, working heart. You are flawed. He shook his head to rid himself of the voice. “I only obey one voice,” he muttered to himself.

Hyoyeon looked over at him. “What did you say?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he looked away. She scrutinized him for a few more seconds, and then returned to her document. “What is that?” he indicated towards her.

“This?” she pointed at the page. He nodded. “This is a book. It’s an Old World artifact, salvaged from the old Sector 8 library before the arsonists got to it.” Sunggyu remembered the Sector 8 library fire. It had occurred about 5 years ago. The news reported it as an accident, and he repeated the information. Hyoyeon simply gave him a bitter smile and returned to the book.

“I’d like to read one,” Sunggyu blurted out. The first voice gave a splutter or protest, but the second voice, his voice, made a noise of agreement. Hyoyeon raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

“Tonight,” she finally replied. “We’ll read them together. I think there’ll be some things you’d be very interested to know about.”

The room was pitch black, the only source of light coming from the screen in the very center of the room. Wrapped in the blanket on Hyoyeon’s couch, Sunggyu couldn’t stop shivering. Hyoyeon beside him was silent, her face preoccupied as she watched the screen blankly.

It was unfair, Sunggyu thought to himself as he stared out of the window at the city lights. It was unfair to spring all of this on him at once. He had already suffered one short circuit that day; he didn’t think his system could take another. There was too much information to process, too much contradictory information to override the ones already in his head. He didn’t know what to think, there was nothing inside his memory to prepare him to deal with this sort of situation.

Earlier that night, Hyoyeon had dumped an assortment of paper clippings, scribbled notes, and books on the kitchen table. “These first,” she had said, sitting down on the chair opposite him. “Nothing too serious, I don’t want to shock your system even more.” She selected a clipping from the pile and pushed it towards him. “Lesson one.”

Sunggyu read of the first Droid to ever be built. He read about the details of the procedure, of how the first Droid was made from the body of a dead man, brought back to life with the help of modern technology and machine. He read about the war that destroyed most of modern civilization, of how Nea Pragmaton was constructed from the ashes over a land once known as Korea. He read about how the surviving humans found the documents pertaining to that first Droid. And then he read, with increasing trepidation, about how the humans created one Droid after another, simple ones to assist with the rebuilding of the city. Of how the production of the Droids kept escalating, until they began to outnumber the human race.

“And so,” Hyoyeon said a matter-of-factly, her eyes trained on the line he had been reading, “The humans called for the production to stop. They began Deactivating the Droids, one by one, until the population was reduced by half. The humans had no complaints after that.”

Fast forward 20 years, and Droids began appearing again out of nowhere. By then the city had prospered, becoming one of the largest and most technologically advanced in the world, and no one questioned their existence. “Read this,” Hyoyeon pushed another clipping forward. It was an article from a clandestine news company of how the government planned to have the Droids completely take over the human race, of how the newer Droids were programmed to destroy the humans with advance abilities that the older versions lacked. Sunggyu looked up from the article.

“This is why you hate us so much,” he remarked. She simply nodded.

“It’s not just you I hate,” she replied. “The government, the city. I hate it all.” She looked up at him then, her eyes spitting fire. “I’m going to burn it all to the ground.” Sunggyu sat still, letting the words process in his mind. She stood up and bent over the table. “Won’t you help me?”

“Why should I?” were the first words out of his mouth. She smiled, a strange smile that told him nothing.

“You’ll see,” was all she said.

Now they were here, waiting for the 2300 news broadcast. Sunggyu felt a chill shiver through his body as he looked out at the city again. To have it burned to the ground, the city of his birth, to destroy it with his own hands… he shook his head. No, there was no way. Destroying was not something he was programmed to do. But then again, said his voice. You were not programmed to have a beating heart either. He caught sight of his reflection, at his glowing blue eyes, and he looked away. And yet your eyes still glow blue in the dark, the programmed voice sounded smug.

“Yesterday, at approximately 2100 hours, three Droids were attacked in an alleyway in Sector 1, beside the Machina Diner. They claimed to have been minding their own business when set upon by a female human.” Hyoyeon narrowed her eyes and let out an angry hiss. “However, they were just making their escape when another Droid took up where the human left off and assaulted two of the three victims. One of the men was Deactivated, but the other victims managed to successfully imprint their attacker’s data.”

Sunggyu was suddenly aware of every labored breath, that the air entering his lungs was suddenly heavy, that his newly acquired heart was beating harder and faster than ever. Deactivated… I deactivated a fellow Droid. He was aware that Hyoyeon was looking at him, but he could only stare blankly at the hovering screen, stare back at his face projected for the whole city to see, with the words WANTED scrawled across the bottom.

“Patrollers are currently on high alert and searching for this man. If you have any information regarding him, please contact your local Patroller. Also, witnesses of the incident are obliged to come forward, as any help will be very welcome.” His face disappeared, to be replaced by the reporter’s. “Remember, Nea Pragmaton does not tolerate any sort of disloyalty, and rest assured that the perpetrator will be punished.” The reporter looked straight into the camera and Sunggyu felt that she knew where he was, that they had found him and would be coming for him any second now. But then she looked back at her desk, and he exhaled.

Hyoyeon motioned with her hand and the screen disappeared, the lights coming on. She waved her hand in a downward motion and the windows out. Sunggyu stared at his feet, still shivering. “Look at me, Sunggyu,” she ordered. He did, grudgingly. “Now you know the truth. Humans will always be in the wrong in their eyes. There was no mention of the fact that the Droids attacked first, that they attacked me after that. Do you see now? You’re wanted.”

“But if they place superiority on a Droid then I should be safe…” he muttered, not entirely convinced by his argument either. This was so unfair.

“Don’t you get it?!”Hyoyeon thumped a fist on the couch. “They’ll destroy you anyway! When the humans are gone, when they’ve all been annihilated, they’ll take you out anyway! They’ll have no use for the older Droids, not anymore! You’ll just be scrap metal to them!”

They stared at each other in tense silence.

“You’ll die either way,” she finally said. “If they catch you you’ll die, but if they let you go you’ll die anyway. You can come with me, and together we’ll destroy this god-forsaken place, you and me. We’ll live, you’ll see.”

A patroller hovered past the window and Sunggyu flinched visibly, even though they couldn't be seen behind the out window. Hyoyeon regarded him with an amused look. “You’re a wanted man now,” she said, her voice softer than it had been before. “You have no more options.”

Sunggyu looked up at her, thoughts whirring in his mind. Trying to take in the last 24 hours was proving to be a bigger task than expected, what with all the conspiracies he had learnt. And now this. Something was telling him that Hyoyeon was right. Why not try something reckless? He was going to die anyway. But the old voice, the programmed voice, kept telling him that this was wrong.

You have a human heart now, the new voice - his voice -  took over. You’re less of a Droid than you were yesterday. Nobody controls you anymore. You can do whatever you want.

Sunggyu looked at Hyoyeon and she stared back expectantly.

Don't you want to be free?

“Okay,” he said, the finality of the words heavy and strange on his tongue. “I’ll do it.”