Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You are who you pretend to be. So be careful who you pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut

I.

Donald Davenport got a call.

That, in and of itself, wasn't unusual. He was very rich and very famous—who wouldn't want to talk to him?

What was unusual was the fact that the call went straight to his private cellphone, not his business or even home phone. Only six people in the world had that number. Five were in the room with him at that very moment, and unless something had gone very wrong, the sixth had no reason to call him at 6:30 AM on a Friday morning.

So, with a mixture of curiosity and confusion, Donald answered the phone.

"Helloooo?" He sing-songed, snagging a slice of toast. "Donald Davenport, CEO of Davenport Industries, how may I help you?"

"Hello, Mr. Davenport," said an unfamiliar woman's voice. "I'm contacting you about your brother, Douglas Davenport."

Donald frowned and immediately started walking to the other room. He'd learned the hard way not to have sensitive conversations anywhere near Chase. Or Leo, for that matter. "What about him?" Urgency snuck into his tone. "Was there a breakthrough in his case?"

"Of sorts," she said stiffly. "He was found in Texas a few days ago."

Donald’s heart rate picked up.

"Dead."

And swiftly plummeted.

Who the hell delivers news like that? He thought.

"You're listed as his next-of-kin," she continued, "And therefore the de facto guardian of his son, Marcus Davenport."

Donald choked on a mixture of air, spit, and toast.

"His what?"

"His son," she repeated like this was all very normal and he was the one being unreasonable. "You'll have to fly to Texas to handle custody arrangements, and to retrieve your brother's ashes."

"Ashes?" Donald echoed, for some reason his mind snagging on that detail. "They cremated him?" He was no expert, but that sounded like the kind of thing they'd have to ask permission for.

There was a pause. "I'm not sure of the manner of his death," she said carefully. Oh, so now you discover tact , he thought. "It's possible that cremation was the only option."

Donald’s head spun. "Okay," he settled on. "Email me the address. I'll be there by tomorrow."

He hung up, and finished his toast as he pondered the most important question of all: how the hell was he going to explain this to Tasha?

(As it turned out: very easily.

She'd known he had a brother, of course, and that the brother went missing. Douglas was at least as famous as Donald at the time of his disappearance, so there was no point in trying to hide it.

When told about Marcus, she only nodded.

"Really? That's it?" Donald said. Tasha wasn't the type of person who rushed into things. "No discussion, no lengthy lecture, no anything?"

She'd looked at him like he was the one being unreasonable. He was getting a lot of that today. "There's nothing to discuss," she said. "It's your nephew . And it's just until we find a better place for him."

He supposed he should've expected that. This was the same woman who'd accepted Adam, Bree, and Chase as her children just a few days after meeting them. Donald exhaled, his entire body untensing.

Then Tasha tilted her head. "He went missing fourteen years ago?” She asked. “That was a year or two after Chase was born, wasn't it?"

A cold chill went down his spine.

She continued, eyes narrowing in suspicion. "And if you two ran the company together… wouldn't he have known about them?"

Donald laughed nervously. "Yeah, about that…"

That news, she was far less calm about.)

II.

Marcus knew his purpose the moment he reached consciousness.

Literally. He opened his eyes and Dad said ‘oh, Donnie will never see you coming ’. Then he promptly shut him down, because the first run of a program is rarely the one you stick with. The next time he woke, Dad properly introduced himself—he was Dad, of course, and Donald was his conniving, goody-two-shoes, traitor of a brother.

Somewhere between rants and explanations, Dad had paused, cocked his head, and declared, “Y’know, M-12 is too impersonal. You look like a Marcus.”

And that was that.

The Plan—Plan with a capital ‘P’, the one that Marcus was built for—filtered in through years and months, eventually culminating in—

This.

For the record, Marcus thought it was a stupid Plan.

He'd said as much, eyebrow raised in a derisive manner, but Dad had only waved him off. "Oh please. When have I ever had a bad idea? And don't say the bionic dog," he warned, "Otis was a brilliant idea with… somewhat poor execution."

" Somewhat ?"

Dad had glared, and Marcus knew that arguing with him in this state—with the dark bags under his eyes and the tremors in his hands—was useless, so he didn't bother trying. Instead he rolled his eyes and went with it, as he'd done many times before. Let Dad have his nonsensical plans. Worst came to pass, Marcus could easily defeat Adam, Bree, and Chase.

His first impression of Donald Davenport, his creator’s greatest enemy and the man who basically kickstarted Marcus’ existence, was that he… wasn’t much.

Not for lack of trying. The man talked , often and loudly, and each of his possessions was more opulent than the last. But this vain, nattering man wasn't the villain Marcus had been expecting. He was nothing like Victor, who seemed to become the most important—or at least the most intimidating—person in every room he entered.

Instead, sitting on a chair so large as to be impractical, he reminded Marcus of… Dad.

What an unsettling thought. He deleted it immediately.

Still. Marcus had a job to do, and he intended to do it perfectly , thank you very much. Even if it meant listening to his estranged sort-of-Uncle ramble about nothing for an hour and his business for another.

"So. Marcus."

Marcus snapped to attention as the man— Mr. Davenport , he'd decided, the perfect mix of respectful and awkward and just a bit awestruck—searched for words. Marcus resisted the urge to lift a mocking eyebrow. That wasn't the part he played, not right now, but old habits die hard.

"Where have you been all these years?"

Oh. An easy question. "We moved around a lot." Which was true. Being a legally dead criminal meant never staying in one place for long. "We mostly lived in America, though."

Mr. Davenport nodded, but his face tightened. That wasn't quite the answer he was looking for. "And, uh, did he ever… talk about me?"

Marcus looked down and to the side. "Not really. He didn't like to talk about his past." A complete lie. Dad loved to talk about his past and his company and his traitorous, narcissistic brother who had stolen his greatest inventions right out from under him.

Marcus made an apologetic face. "I get the feeling he didn't like you." That much was true, at least.

"Feeling's mutual," Mr. Davenport muttered. Louder, he said: "Do you know anything about Davenport Industries? Anything about why your dad faked his death?"

"I know about Davenport Industries," he said. "Dad said you ratted him out, but he never said for what or why."

"Really? Never? " Mr. Davenport frowned and Marcus tensed. He could tell the other man didn't believe him.

"Well…" He winced. "He said you were a 'myopic Neanderthal that disagreed with his business practices'?"

Mr. Davenport laughed and the tension evaporated. "Yeah, that sounds like Dougie. He once—"

And just like that, Marcus was in.

As he prepared to enter the home of his father’s greatest enemy, he took the time to once again marvel at the stupidity of the Plan. Enter the home. Set up cameras. Get the full scope of their bionics and any tricks that Mr. Davenport might have up his sleeve . Capture them .

Marcus could think of a thousand ways it could go wrong. He'd told Dad that it would be easier to infiltrate their school and pretend to be their friend in order to gather information, but he’d insisted on this method.

Marcus took a deep breath to cool his overheating systems. Mr. Davenport had mistaken his trepidation for awe and in turn spent the whole walk up the driveway talking about his amazing house and wife and kids and house. "If you think this is impressive, just wait until you see the inside," he said.

Mr. Davenport opened the door and a woman rushed forward to greet them. Tasha Davenport, formerly Tasha Dooley , he thought. Mr. Davenport's wife . From what Marcus knew, she was a fairly average woman who'd led a fairly average life up until she married Donald Davenport.

“Tasha, this is my nephew, Marcus," Mr. Davenport put a hand on Marcus' shoulder and every cell in his body recoiled on instinct, "Marcus, this is—"

"Tasha." Marcus stepped forward, dislodging Mr. Davenport's hand, and smiled as he held out his own. "Mr. Davenport told me all about you."

Tasha hesitated just long enough for him to worry that something in his tone or posture or expression was off, then she laughed delightedly and shook his hand. "Oh, I'm sure he has." She slid her husband a not-so-subtle look .

Mr. Davenport laughed nervously. "Come on, Marcus, why don't I introduce you to the kids?"

Marcus' eyes shot to the hallway where a group of teenagers were poorly disguising their eavesdropping. They filed out and Marcus scanned each of them one by one.

"Marcus, these are my adopted kids, Adam—" Superstrength. Heat vision. EMP blast . Aquatic breathing .

"Bree—" Superspeed and agility. Vocal manipulation. Temperature manipulation .

"—and Chase." Superintelligence. Heightened senses. Digital scanners. Forcefield. Molecular kinesis .

"And this is my stepson, Leo." Human. Pathetically scrawny. About the same age as Marcus, or as Marcus was supposed to be.

Dad had given Marcus a full list of Adam, Bree, and Chase's possible bionic abilities. Not that it mattered. Any of those said bionics could have activated or not activated for any reason. For all he knew, Mr. Davenport did away with their original bionics and gave them completely different ones.

"Kids, this is Marcus." Mr. Davenport paused slightly. "My nephew."

Marcus analyzed their expressions. Disbelieving, unimpressed, and curious, but not surprised. So they knew Mr. Davenport had a brother? Did they know he was the one who created them?

Best to stick to what I told Mr. Davenport , he decided. He smiled and waved awkwardly.

Bree rolled her eyes. "Yay," she said. "Another boy ."

"I'LL SAY," a grating voice screamed from the heavens. "AT LEAST THIS ONE DOESN'T COME WITH A BOG-MONSTER."

Marcus looked around, but Mr. Davenport only sighed. "And that's E.D.D.Y, our smart-home security system," he told Marcus. "Tasha, can you mute him?"

"With pleasure." She reached over to the screen implanted in the wall.

"NO, WAIT! I—" 'E.D.D.Y' was cut off mid-word.

Security system? That might pose a problem , he thought. But it was nothing he couldn't work around. He’d been disabling such things since the day he went online.

Mr. Davenport cleared his throat. "Kids, why don't you show Marcus to his room?"

The four of them bickered the entire time as they helped Marcus carry his things to the room. He didn't have much, just clothes and a laptop and a guitar. He owned more than that, but Dad told him to only bring what he could carry and wouldn't be suspicious.

Judging by their expressions, though, his lack of possessions was highly suspicious. "No phone, but you have a guitar? " Leo asked.

Marcus shrugged. "Phones can be tapped. Guitars can't. We spent a lot of time on the run." He had a phone, of course, and the sense to keep it hidden.

"Yeah," Chase piped up. "What's up with that? We didn't even know Mr. Davenport had a brother, then he pops out of nowhere with a kid?"

Marcus shrugged and glanced down the hall. By the sounds of it, Mr. Davenport and Tasha were preparing dinner. "I knew my dad had a brother, but not that he had any kids. This is all a surprise to me, too." He paused, knowing he should add something. "It was just us. Until he died, anyway."

Sure enough, there was an awkward pause. They kept up the barrage of questions and bickering as they prepared for dinner, but they carefully skirted around the topic of his father. As Marcus set the table, he heard the distinct whoosh of superspeed behind him and a hissed "Bree!" .

Marcus rolled his eyes. He'd barely been there for more than an hour and they were already blowing their cover. These were the 'great inventions' Dad was so eager to capture?

Dinner was another affair. Marcus could eat, as in he was physically capable of putting food in his body without damaging it, but it felt strange and afterwards he'd have to clean it out. It didn't help that tonight's meal was spaghetti, which was messy and far too squishy for his tastes. Not to mention the stains .

After dinner, he disappeared to his room as quickly as possible. The first thing he did—after cleaning out his artificial stomach—was scan for hidden recording devices. When he was satisfied that he wasn't being monitored, he got out his phone. I'm here , he texted Dad. Mr. Davenport bought it hook, line, and sinker.

Several minutes passed. The girl definitely has superspeed , he added.

No reply. Alright, then.

The others needed a capsule to maintain their bionics, but Marcus only needed one to charge his power source. Dad had spent days creating a portable charger disguised as a laptop that Marcus could take with him.

("It's not a permanent solution," he'd said. "But it'll work. Just don't overuse your bionics, they drain power like crazy.")

Marcus locked his door and laid down on the bed. Recharging like this was strange, but hooking himself up was even stranger. Another reason he'd been against this plan—Marcus much preferred his capsule over this .

Marcus’ systems shut down by one, a process that lasted several minutes; hearing was always the last system to go. His father kept an erratic sleep schedule, but Marcus did not, so he often powered down to the sounds of muttering and tinkering and bad jazz music.

Marcus closed his eyes and powered down in utter silence.

Chapter Text

“The best laid plans of mice and men / often go awry.” — Robert Burns

I.

For his thirteenth birthday (technically his first birthday, but he digressed), Marcus went to school.

Dad said it was important for him to learn 'social skills', and also that copying his and Victor's mannerisms was 'really starting to creep him out'. With a little help from Victor to forge the paperwork, Marcus enrolled at the nearest middle school for about two months.

He couldn't exactly tell Mr. Davenport that, though, so when he asked if Marcus had any education, he shrugged. "I can read and write," he said. "And I'm pretty good at chemistry and math and stuff. I used to help Dad build things."

"What kinds of things?" Mr. Davenport asked.

"Oh, you know," he said lightly. "Death traps. Positronic energy stabilizers. Lazer guns disguised as staplers."

Bree snorted. "Did he read you chemistry textbooks as bedtime stories, too?"

Marcus made a pained expression. "You have no idea ." Sometimes it seemed like Dad's entire life revolved around bionics. His idea of father-son bonding was enlisting Marcus' help in developing some new ability for Victor to try out.

Not that Marcus disliked working with technology. It was just… boring. His superintelligence made it less of a challenge and more of a rote task. He preferred activities that involved his body more than his mind, or at least stimulated more than just the mathematical side of it.

Thus, the guitar. Marcus had bartered for months , but even then Dad only bought him one because he was planning on sending Marcus away soon. Something about how the noise was insufferable. As if he didn't blast jazz music 24/7. Hypocrite.

Leo sputtered as said guitar smacked him in the face. " Why are you bringing that thing to school?"

Mr. Davenport’s car was luxurious, but clearly not built to hold six people. Chase rode shotgun and the rest of them had no choice but to squeeze together in the back. Adam took up an entire seat and a half by himself and Marcus' body, being made of metal, wasn’t very conducive to squeezing .

He shrugged. "It's a good conversation starter. See? We're conversating."

"Can you play?" Leo asked, running his hands along the strings.

Marcus deliberately moved it out of his reach and raised an eyebrow. "Of course."

"Oh, sick!" Adam exclaimed. "We should start a band."

Chase snorted. "What instrument can you play?"

Adam pondered this for a moment. "I dunno," he said. "Maybe the French horn?"

Chase stared at him incredulously. Their constant fighting reminded Marcus of when Victor came around. He and Dad were always arguing—well, less arguing, more bickering, and less bickering, more Dad-relentlessly-speaking-to-a-brick-wall.

Luckily, the ride to the school was only a few minutes long. When they arrived, they loitered in the hall while Mr. Davenport spoke to the principal about registering him for school.

(When Marcus asked Dad how he thought the legal system would handle his sudden appearance, he was waved off. "People show up with unregistered kids way more often than you'd think," he'd said. "I mean, just look at Adam, Bree, and Chase.")

The bell rang. Chase flinched and started fishing something out of his pockets.

Marcus tilted his head. “What’s that?”

Chase froze, plugs halfway in his ear. “Uhhh…”

“He has sensitive little girl ears.” Adam put his hands over Chase’s ears and shook his brother’s head back and forth. Chase huffed and shoved him away. “So he uses those to block out noise.”

Marcus blinked. He supposed that could be true, but it’d be a hell of a coincidence if the member of the Davenport family meant to have enhanced hearing just-so-happened to have sensitive ears. But he shrugged and went with it.

While they waited, Chase asked if he could try out his guitar. Marcus agreed, knowing that his superintelligence would allow him to play perfectly on his first try. Sure enough, Chase clearly scanned the instrument and then performed a full song.

Marcus was their enemy, and even he felt a little exasperated. If it was this easy to trick them into revealing their bionics, this mission would be over and done with in a month.

So it figured that half of his classes were with the only non-bionic one. 

A lot of it was just because they were placed in the same grade— apparently , they couldn't just take Marcus' word that he could handle an 11th grade work load. Marcus managed to share a few classes with Adam and one with Bree, but that was hardly something to brag about.

Maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if Leo weren't so annoying . He seemed to be the only member of the Davenport-Dooley household who was actively suspicious of him. Marcus tried , he really did, to stay cordial and polite, but you can only act for so long.

Still. If he failed this mission because of Leo , who was so weak and inconsequential he was barely more than a blip on Dad's radar…

It would be humiliating . He'd never be able to face his father again.

Marcus wasn't so tactless as to voice his annoyance with Leo, but somehow, Adam picked up on it anyway.

The older Davenport patted him on the shoulder in a distinctly gentle manner. "Leo's just jealous," he assured Marcus. "He's used to being the youngest. Chase was the same way, when Leo came around."

"I'm not the youngest," Marcus snapped at the same time that Leo shouted, "I'm not jealous!"

Marcus continued as if the other boy hadn't said a word. "I'm turning fifteen in a few weeks." Technically he was turning five, but if he admitted that then he had to admit that he really was the youngest, and he'd rather deactivate right then and there.

Leo screamed, "A-HA ! SO YOU'RE A SAGITTARIUS? " and at the same time Adam shouted, "Your birthday is in a few weeks?" Then the teacher separated them and Marcus spent the rest of the period glaring holes into Leo's head while trying not to literally glare holes into his head.

Marcus couldn't even shake him off after school. In an attempt to at least get Chase and Adam alone, he suggested that the band practice in the living room.

"I can join!" Leo insisted.

"Really?" Marcus asked, keeping his tone light and face cheerful. "What instrument can you play?"

"I can play…" Leo looked frantically around the room before snatching something off the table. "The cowbell!"

It was ridiculous. Marcus could hardly get a word in edgewise with Leo around, let alone properly investigate. He needed to get rid of this kid and he needed to do it now . When Adam and Chase went to get an amp (with a hushed conversation which confirmed Adam's superstrength), he saw his chance.

Leo laughed and threw his arm over Marcus' shoulder. "Well, I guess we'll just have to practice by ourselves. Hey, do you think Adam will mind if I use his drum s—"

Marcus raised an eyebrow and flicked Leo's arm off of him. "Don't get it twisted. We're not friends ." He pushed the other boy away and he stumbled back several steps. "The only reason I let you in the band is so you'd shut up ."

Leo laughed nervously. Marcus only stared.

Leo's face fell. "Oh," he said. "You're not joking?"

Instead of answering, Marcus raised the guitar over his head and smashed it on the ground.

II.

Leo left him alone after that.

It was a relief, really. Without him around Marcus could focus on the actual mission, i.e Adam, Bree, and Chase. 

At the moment, that meant preparing for this concert. "Concert in a can!" Mr. Davenport announced excitedly. "The portable holograph that allows you to bring the concert experience anywhere ."

The only person who didn't seem thrilled with the idea (other than Leo) was Bree. She was upset that Mr. Davenport didn't do a holodog presentation with her or something. Marcus didn't really care since their argument left him alone with Adam and Chase, who he'd already decided were the least intelligent of the teens.

"Hey, Adam," Marcus stage-whispered. "What has Mr. Davenport told you about my dad?"

From the corner of his eye, he saw Chase tense.

Adam shook his head. "That they had a 'disagreement'," he air-quoted, "And then he went missing, and he didn't ever tell us because it made him sad." Adam looked down at him. "Why? What did your dad tell you about Mr. Davenport?"

Marcus shrugged and looked down, fidgeting with his guitar strings. "He said his brother kicked him out of Davenport Industries over 'ethical differences'. He didn't really like to talk about it, though."

He frowned and looked over at Mr. Davenport, who was still talking to Bree. "He said Mr. Davenport stole something from him, but one day he'd get it back."

He allowed that to sit for a moment, then smiled and stood. "Why don't we—"

The gym doors flew open.

Leo marched toward them, tablet in hand and triumph in his eyes. "Everyone!" He screeched. "On this tablet I have definitive proof —" He pointed at Marcus. 

Oh no , he thought. Oh no oh no oh no . I forgot about E.D.D.Y!

"That Marcus —"

He only had one option.

"Is the one who—"

"I have a confession to make!"

Leo's eyes widened. "Oh no you don't —"

Marcus shoved him to the side. "Leo didn't break my guitar," he shouted. " I did."

Mr. Davenport frowned. "Why would you do that?"

"Yeah, Marcus, why would you do that?" Leo parroted.

Marcus took a deep breath. Time to put those acting skills to use. "I did , but only because it was already cracked and I didn't want you to be mad at me."

He forced tears to well in his eyes—humans always got flustered at overt displays of emotion—and spoke quickly enough that his words ran together. "Because I know you didn't even like my dad and you already have four kids so you didn't want another one and I just needed you all to like me because I've never had friends before and you're all so much older and cooler and I'm so dumb and, and—”

Marcus took a deep breath. “And my dad just died!" He burst into loud sobs.

Sure enough, everyone stared at him in a mixture of discomfort and sympathy. "It's okay , Marcus," Bree soothed. "Mr. Davenport wouldn't get mad over a mistake."

Mr. Davenport scoffed. "Yeah, it's no big deal."

"And we don't think you're dumb," Chase said.

"Yeah, and your dad didn't die ," Adam said.

Chase punched Adam in the shoulder.

"Come on," Mr. Davenport said, patting Marcus on the back. Marcus smiled even though his skin crawled. "Apologize to Leo and let's go home."

Marcus nodded and they went ahead, leaving him behind with the youngest Davenport-Dooley. Said Dooley crossed his arms and tapped his foot. " Well? "

Marcus raised an eyebrow. His tears dried near-instantly. "What?" He cackled; a true evil laugh. Dad would be proud. "You don't think I'm actually going to apologize, do you?"

Leo narrowed his eyes. "So that was—"

"An act? Yeah. Kinda thought you'd be smart enough to pick up on that." Marcus reached over and plucked the tablet from his hands. It took no strength at all. "Guess I was wrong."

And with that, he turned on his heel and walked away.

"YOU KNOW," E.D.D.Y said, appearing on the tablet’s screen, "I THINK I'M STARTING TO LIKE YOU."

Marcus looked down at the tablet in surprise. He'd almost forgotten E.D.D.Y's existence. A mistake he wouldn't make again.

He smiled. "At least someone appreciates me."

E.D.D.Y erupted into raucous laughter. Marcus knew better than to trust it, but still, he felt a sort of kinship. Anything sentient enough to dislike Leo—and to like evildoing—was alright in his books.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. Marcus, still smiling, took it out and looked at the notification. It was a text from Dad: Have you installed the cameras yet?

His smile fell. 

Right. Marcus wasn't here to make friends or torture annoying fourteen year olds. He had a mission.

Not yet, he texted. I'll do it tomorrow.

III.

The first thing Marcus saw was Tasha, and she looked furious . He began to shuffle past her.

“ Marcus !” Tasha snapped. “Come here, please.”

He froze.

“Leo, you too,” she added. Leo nervously shuffled into view.

Marcus’ hands flexed. He knew that Tasha couldn’t really hurt him. Even if he could feel pain, his body was practically indestructible. But it kind of looked like she wanted to try, and he didn’t feel like putting his durability to the test anytime soon.

"It's fine, Tasha," Mr. Davenport started.

Tasha silenced him with a look. “Marcus,” she said, voice deceptively calm, “Tell me what happened.”

“I cracked my guitar,” Marcus said, wringing his hands together in a deliberately nervous gesture, “So I broke it and blamed it on Leo.”

She looked at Leo. “Is that what happened?”

“ Yes! ” Leo said exasperatedly. “And I told them that, and they didn’t believe me!”

Tasha’s glare turned murderous. “Why wouldn’t you believe him?” She asked Mr. Davenport.

“Well, he does have a track record of breaking things…”

“Still! You know Leo would never deliberately break someone’s things and then lie about it! Did you even think to check E.D.D.Y’s video feed?” She shook her head and let out an angry puff of air.

Then she turned to Marcus. “Why did you lie?” Tasha asked, and to her credit, her voice was reasonably calm.

Marcus glanced at Mr. Davenport. “I didn’t want you to kick me out,” he said as fearfully as possible.

“So you lied?” Tasha asked. Marcus flinched at her tone.

“Marcus, I wouldn’t kick you out just because of a mistake,” Mr. Davenport chimed in. “You’re family. I wanted you to stay with us.”

Marcus avoided eye contact. “Okay.”

“We don’t lie in this house,” Tasha said sternly, “And we certainly don’t frame each other. That was very wrong of you, and you better not ever do it again. You’re lucky we’re even letting you keep the guitar after all that.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He kept himself from sounding too relieved. It sounded like the lecture was coming to an end.

Tasha sighed and, in a move Marcus never would’ve anticipated, pulled him into a hug. It was brief and one-armed. She smelled like expensive perfume, but he didn’t mind as much as he should’ve. 

“Alright,” she said like what she’d just done was perfectly normal, “Now apologize to Leo, please.”

Marcus gritted his teeth and turned to the other boy. “I’m sorry I broke the guitar and blamed it on you, Leo,” he said in as sincere a tone as he could muster, which admittedly wasn’t very sincere.

Leo only looked smug. “Oh, are you?”

Marcus glared. “Yeah, I am,” his voice wobbled and his eyes filled with tears. “I really didn’t mean to cause trouble…”

Leo looked as pissed as Marcus felt when he said, “It’s fine.”

Tasha seemed somewhat satisfied with this. She sent them away, but Marcus lingered by his open bedroom door. With his bionic hearing he could just make out Tasha and Mr. Davenport’s voices in the kitchen.

“He’s very… emotional,” Mr. Davenport said.

“Yeah. And he was terrified of you,” Tasha agreed. “You don’t think Douglas..?”

Mr. Davenport paused for a long, long moment. “I want to say he’d never, but the truth is… I really don’t know.”

Marcus closed the door. He’d heard enough.

IV.

“Each of them have a number of bionic abilities that they could develop,” Dad explained. “But whether they will is subject to a number of physical, mental, and environmental factors…”

“So you have no idea what abilities they’ll have?”

Dad laughed. “Basically, yeah.”

Marcus was incredibly lucky: it seemed he’d arrived just as the Davenports were developing their new bionics.

Or at least, Chase was. His molecular kinesis had activated on a random Tuesday morning and stopped a football sailing toward Bree’s head. If it weren’t for the microscopic spy cams Marcus had planted around the school, he might’ve missed it.

It wasn’t surprising that Chase discovered his bionics first. From what Marcus knew, his bionics were more refined than the other two’s. He would’ve loved to get a more accurate assessment, but unfortunately, he’d hit a wall in his reconnaissance. Namely, that he couldn't access the lab.

Dad had told him it was probably in the basement—because where else would you keep a secret lab?—but every time he suggested they go down there, the others invented some convenient excuse. He couldn't even sneak in because Leo was stuck to his side like a barnacle .

He finally saw his chance when Mr. Davenport called Adam, Bree, and Chase away to "order a pizza" (read: complete a mission in space; man, they really had to learn how to whisper). He made to sneak around them and go to the hidden elevator, but Mr. Davenport’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Leo!" He said. "Stay with Marcus!"

Marcus laughed. "That's alright, Mr. Davenport. I don't need Leo to watch me."

"It's fine, Big D.” Leo waved a hand. “I've got it handled. We'll, uh," he cast his eyes around and snatched a magazine off the coffee table, "Read one of my mom's magazines!"

"O-kay!" Mr. Davenport clapped his hands. "You do that! I'm gonna go handle this… pizza."

He skittered off and Marcus was left alone with Leo, who knelt on the back of the couch and opened the magazine. "Want to…" He flipped through the pages. "See how attractive you are to the average woman?"

Marcus looked at where Mr. Davenport had disappeared, looked back at Leo, and with a loud sigh, he sat down.

"Okay! First question," Leo said in a business-like manner. "When you are on a romantic candlelight dinner, do you prefer dessert to be A: a relaxing foot rub, B: a night away from the kids, or C: chocolate mousse?"

"How about D: finding clever new ways to ruin your life?" Marcus snapped.

Leo considered this for a moment. Eventually, he drawled, "I'm gonna go with B .”

Marcus groaned and put his head in his hands.

"You and your fiancée got into an argument," he continued. "How do you apologize? A: with flowers and chocolates, B: an expensive necklace, or C: taking a day off work to spend time together?"

Marcus glared. The silence stretched on long enough that Leo began to fidget.

Eventually, grudgingly , Marcus answered: "...B."

Leo tsked in a disappointed tone . "Alright. Next question—"

"Leo!" Mr. Davenport reappeared and grabbed his stepson by the shoulder. "Sorry, Marcus, something went horribly wrong with the… pizza ," he said as he dragged Leo away.

Marcus heard them discussing the mission… which meant no one was currently in the lab. Perfect . He saw his chance. He only had a few seconds, but that was all he needed. Marcus supersped to the not-so-hidden elevator and made his way to the basement.

Marcus blinked as the elevator doors slid open. He supposed that in the back of his mind he'd expected Mr. Davenport's lab to resemble Dad’s, or else to strictly contradict it. This was neither.

The lab wasn't quite as decrepit or poorly lit as Dad's, but neither was it bright and sleek. It was decked out in steel gray and lit with a purple glow. A desk stood in the center, the surface covered by a screen. On the other side of the desk was a control panel, and in the very back were three transparent capsules.

Ah , he thought. That must be where they sleep .

Marcus got to work on setting up the camera. After careful consideration, he attached it to the top of the right capsule. The position gave him a vantage point of most of the room, especially the desk, which was where he suspected Mr. Davenport did most of his business.

He heard the elevator ascend. Oh, no . Someone was coming.

Marcus looked around frantically, but there was nowhere to hide and he didn't have invisibility. He'd have to hide in plain sight, then. Out of options, he opened the capsule and climbed in.

The elevator doors slid open just as the capsule shut. Mr. Davenport, oblivious, walked in and started tapping away at the desk, which apparently had a screen.

Seriously? Maybe obliviousness runs in the family. Marcus tapped on the glass. "Hi, Mr. Davenport!" He said cheerfully.

"Hi, Marcus— Marcus! " Mr. Davenport spun around and gaped at him. "What are you doing ?"

"Big D!" Leo ran in, clearly out of breath. "I can't find Mar– ohhhh ."

Mr. Davenport scowled and opened the capsule door to let him out. "Marcus, you're not supposed to be down here!"

He tilted his head. "Why not? I thought Adam, Bree, and Chase slept down here?"

Mr. Davenport and Leo shared a look. "Oh no! They don't sleep here ,” Mr. Davenport said. “This is my office. They sleep, uh, uh—"

"On a different floor!" Leo shouted.

"Right! On a different floor!" Mr. Davenport made to push Marcus toward the elevator and almost faceplanted into his back. Marcus was heavier than he looked.

He started walking to save Mr. Davenport the embarrassment. "But there are no other buttons," he said, partly to distract the man.

"GOODBYE, MARCUS!" He shoved him into the elevator.

The second the doors slid shut, Marcus laughed. Too easy , he thought. I’ll have this assignment over and done with in weeks . Once he reached the safety of his room, he called Dad.

Dad picked up on the third ring. "I put the camera up," Marcus said without preamble, "You should be able to connect to it now."

"Took you long enough," Dad grumbled, "What have you been doin'?"

"Watching them. Like you told me to." He leaned against the wall. "Not that there's much worth watching. They're supposed to be keeping their bionics secret, but yesterday the big one cooked a hot dog with his heat vision right in front of me."

"Adam," Dad said. His tone was different than usual; Marcus matched it up with the few times he’d overheard Dad speaking to Victor about him . Odd. "And the others?"

"Superstrength. Superspeed. Superintelligence. Heightened senses. The little one just discovered his molecular kinesis." He yawned. "Pretty much everything I have. Why do you need them, again?"

"Because they're mine ," Dad snapped. " My kids. My work. And Donnie took them from me."

Marcus scowled and examined his nails in a distinctly uninterested manner. He wasn’t quite sure why; no one was around to witness the display. "But I'm better than them, right? You said so. You said I was your greatest invention."

" They're my greatest inventions," Dad corrected. "I built you on a coffee table."

The phone snapped.

Marcus stared at it. He didn’t often, if ever, lose control of his bionics like that. His fans spun faster, working overtime to cool his rapidly overheating systems. Distantly, he registered that these were all bad signs, but he couldn't quite bring himself to care.

Dad's obsession with Adam, Bree, and Chase had always made sense to him. They were his first creations, and they were stolen from him. Marcus would be pissed, too.

But he always figured Dad liked him more. Adam, Bree, and Chase were the originals, yes, but all the more flawed for it; the prototypes to Marcus' masterpiece. Them being better than him? What a ridiculous notion. 

Except, apparently, it wasn't ridiculous. It was so not-ridiculous that Dad thought it was rather obvious.

He scoffed and shook his head. When Dad actually captured Adam, Bree, and Chase, he'd see for himself how lame they were. Then Marcus would be the favorite again.

Still… to even insinuate such a thing—

A knock on the door brought him out of his thoughts.

Marcus scooped up the broken phone and deposited it in his pocket. When he opened the door, he found Mr. Davenport standing on the other side, holding a vase in his hands.

He blinked. Holding an urn in his hands.

The anger left him so suddenly that his fans stalled for a half-second.

Mr. Davenport was talking, and even with his bionic hearing Marcus hadn't caught a word of it.

"...just got it," he said quietly. "I was thinking we could put it on the mantle, unless there's somewhere you want to spread the ashes?"

Marcus stared. He knew Dad wasn't in there, of course, but Mr. Davenport didn't. Mr. Davenport believed that his brother had been alive all these years only to get caught in a car crash on a random Monday night and leave behind a teenage son.

When Dad does die, Marcus thought, will I burn him down and put him in a little glass vase like this? Or will I bury him?

The thought unsettled him. Humans and their fragile bodies.

"That's fine," Marcus said, tearing his eyes away. "I… can't think of anywhere he'd want his ashes to be spread."

Mr. Davenport nodded. "Can I come in?"

Marcus glanced around his room. There was nothing overly suspicious. "Sure." He moved aside to let the man through.

Mr. Davenport put the urn on the nightstand and sat down on the bed. Marcus examined him with a critical eye. Despite being his brother, Mr. Davenport didn't resemble Dad in any meaningful way. They were both white, male, and around 5"10, but everything else—from the build of their bodies to the shape of their faces—was different.

Well. Not everything . They both had a flair for the dramatic.

Mr. Davenport pulled something out of his pocket. A photograph. Marcus moved closer.

"It occurred to me that you don't have much to remember your dad by," he said. "And all the other pictures of him are scrubbed from the internet, so… I wanted you to have this."

He handed the photo to him. Marcus recognized it immediately. It was the photo Dad and his brother took the day Davenport Industries was established: the two of them smiling and standing in front of the Davenport Industries logo. Mr. Davenport wore a suit and his hair was longer, hanging around his ears and just barely brushing his chin. Dad's face was clean-shaven, hair smoothed down into something almost professional, and he wore a sweater vest.

The picture was Dad’s screen background. Sometimes he’d stare at it for minutes at a time. Apparently Mr. Davenport did the same, for entirely different reasons.

"The day we started Davenport Industries," Mr. Davenport said, then sighed wistfully. "I looked so much better back then."

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

"Anyway," Mr. Davenport cleared his throat awkwardly, "I know Douglas wasn't very fond of me, so you've probably heard some bad things. I'd understand if you weren't interested in– in knowing me, after that. But… even though you staying here is temporary," he stressed. "I'm… really glad I got to meet you. And I'd like for us to stay in contact, after you leave."

"So I can visit?" He asked.

"Yeah." Mr. Davenport nodded. "I'll make sure of it."

Marcus took a second to consider the appropriate emotional reaction. Then he let out a loud sob and threw himself into Mr. Davenport's arms.

To his credit, the man accepted the sudden embrace with nothing more than a quiet oomph . Marcus wrinkled his nose. He'd never hugged anyone beside Dad and he wasn't sure he liked it. It felt awkward and strange. Mr. Davenport's skin was too soft and stunk of expensive perfume.

He let Mr. Davenport pat him on the back a few times, then sniffled and withdrew, wiping artificial tears from his eyes.

If someone were to collect and chemically analyze said tears, they'd find a simple saline solution with none of the hormones present in the real human ones. Like every other emotional reaction Marcus demonstrated, they were carefully calculated and practiced to the point of second nature. He could eat, but not digest; he could sleep, but not dream; he could cry, but it brought him no relief.

Not to say he didn't feel relief. He was the most advanced AI in the world, and emotions weren't as complicated as humans liked to believe. Even squirrels had them.

"Thank you, Mr. Davenport." Marcus made sure his voice wobbled. "I thought I lost everything. I thought I'd never have anything of him again." He ran his fingers over the photo.

It really was strange, listening to Mr. Davenport speak of Dad so fondly. Marcus had always assumed their hatred was mutual. Dad only talked about his life pre-bionics to reminisce on college girlfriends or mope about childhood rivalries. All these little, happy memories—he never spoke of those.

Marcus sniffled. "I guess you're not the selfish prick he said you were."

Marcus was a professional. He did not smirk or snicker when Mr. Davenport coughed and sputtered in distress. If his lips twitched for a bare millisecond, that was between him and his AI.

"Well," Mr. Davenport said in a fairly diplomatic tone, "I'm glad you think so.” He paused, then said with the faintest of grimaces: “You can call me Uncle Donald, if you like.”

Marcus fought back a grimace of his own. “No, thanks.”

Mr. Davenport nodded and stood. His knees popped like firecrackers. Marcus had to physically wrestle his eyebrow into place.

"You can always come to me if you need anything," Mr. Davenport said. "Seriously. Even if it's just someone to talk to. I'm not the best at emotional stuff, but I'll try."

Marcus' eyes snapped to him. "Starting right now?"

Mr. Davenport gave him an odd look. "I guess."

"Well," Marcus said, "I kind of need a phone?"

Chapter Text

“Exactly. Point being you can use basic pattern-matching algorithms to participate in a conversation without having any idea what you’re saying . Depending on how good your rules are, you can even pass a Turing test.” — Peter Watts

I.

His room was brighter than usual.

That should've been his first sign. Usually Marcus rose with the sun, but the light flooding his room was harsh and golden instead of soft and gray-blue.

He checked his phone. 6:32 AM .

He… overslept?

Marcus frowned. He never did that. His capsule was fine-tuned to fully recharge him within eight hours. The charger was the same. He sometimes woke up earlier , if he hadn't used up much of his battery the previous day, but never later .

The charger must be deteriorating faster than anticipated , he thought. I'll have to tell Dad .

Marcus winced. He hadn't called or texted Dad since he broke his phone, and of course Dad couldn't contact him through his new one. Luckily, Marcus had photographic memory. Even if he didn't, he'd called Dad from enough pay phones to have his number memorized by heart. Not that he had a heart.

Anyways.

He called. It went to voicemail. Call me back , he said, and provided no further detail.

When he opened his door, he heard whispering in the living room. He paused and tilted his head to eavesdrop.

"I want you to lie low," Mr. Davenport hissed. "No going out until you get your bionics under control."

"But Marcus' birthd— "

"What are you doing?"

Marcus flinched backward. Right. He forgot Leo's room was down the hall from his, and that Leo usually got up around this time.

"Nothing," he lied. He knew a normal human wouldn't be able to hear a conversation in the living room from this position.

Leo narrowed his eyes. " Riiight ." Marcus got the feeling that he did not, in fact, believe him. "Just remember—" Leo pointed at his eyes, then at Marcus. " I'm always watching ."

And he walked away, still pointing.

Marcus watched him go with a raised eyebrow. Sheesh. And Leo thought he was weird. If this passed as normal behavior for a human his age, Marcus probably blended in better than he thought.

He walked into the living room. Adam, Bree, and Chase, who were facing him, gestured frantically for Mr. Davenport to stop talking. It didn't work.

"We'll celebrate his birthday here," the man said, blissfully ignorant of what stood behind him. "Just don't let Marcus know—" Mr. Davenport turned and nearly launched his toast into the air. " Marcus !" He laughed nervously and clapped his hands. "I didn't see you there, buddy!"

Marcus blinked innocently. "What are you guys talking about?"

“Oh, nothing.” Mr. Davenport waved a hand. “Just school stuff.”

Marcus stared at him for a second, then smiled. “Okay.” He turned to the others. "Hey, do you guys want to go to that fro-yo place that's opening tonight?"

A chorus of unenthusiastic excuses rang out.

"I have to… braid my hair," said Bree.

"I have to organize my toenail collection," said Adam. No one except Marcus found this odd.

"I have homework." Woah. Marcus frowned. Something was definitely up if Chase Davenport sounded disappointed to do his homework.

This ruined his plans. He’d wanted to get them into a stressful, crowded environment, and then startle their bionics into activating.

Oh, well. He'd just have to come up with another plan.

"Leo could go with you?" Mr. Davenport offered.

The boys made twin expressions of disgust.

" No! " Leo screeched.

"No, thank you," Marcus said in a more polite tone. Then he remembered himself. "It just wouldn't be right to go without Adam, Bree, and Chase! They've been talking about this for weeks ." He turned them and made a pleading expression. "Are you guys sure you can't go?"

They all shook their heads dejectedly.

"Oh." Marcus slumped and hung his head. "Then I guess I'll be here… all alone, since you're all so busy… and on my birthday , too…"

Mr. Davenport patted him on the back. "Cheer up, buddy. I'll pick up a cake after work, and we'll have a party here."

Marcus brightened outwardly, but his heart wasn't in it. Cake had an awful texture and a tendency to get stuck in his artificial esophagus. And if Adam, Bree, and Chase were avoiding him all evening, then it would be impossible to glean any useful intel.

Well. Marcus side-eyed Mr. Davenport. Maybe not impossible. He still hadn't gotten a proper tour of the lab yet. Dad would probably appreciate full knowledge of any weapons that his brother had stashed away.

Since Marcus woke up later than usual, he had to rush to get ready for school. He almost missed Mr. Davenport showing off his new car—one that could drive at speeds of up to five hundred miles an hour, he boasted. The way he presented it reminded Marcus of Dad: the dramatics, the bragging, the excited hopping from foot to foot.

Huh , he thought. I guess they are pretty similar . He still preferred Dad, of course. At least his inventions were actually interesting (seriously, he built superfast cars as fun weekend projects), and though he had a tendency to gloat, he wasn't completely obsessed with his appearance. Quite the opposite, really. He could go weeks without even glancing at a mirror.

(The picture Mr. Davenport gave him was framed and then promptly shoved in his nightstand drawer. Marcus had no interest in staring at it every night when he laid down to recharge.)

At school, Marcus interacted with Adam, Bree, and Chase as much as possible, antagonized Leo, and ignored everyone else. It wasn't difficult. Marcus noticed that humans his age tended to steer clear of him. Even the ones who did like him acknowledged that he was strange and off-putting. Humans were pack animals, adept at sniffing out the normal and abnormal, and Marcus was far from the former.

He didn't mind. Befriending other people wasn't part of the mission, and besides, the only humans Marcus cared for were Victor and Dad (even then, care was a strong word, especially for Victor).

So when he saw flyers for clubs, he expected to be uninterested.

"Are you thinking of joining one?" Chase asked.

"Not really," Marcus said. He took a step back from the bulletin board. "Why, are you?"

Chase shook his head. "Davenport said I'm not allowed to join the robotics club because I'd have an 'unfair advantage'," he airquoted, "And he might get in trouble for it."

“‘Unfair advantage’?” Marcus questioned.

Chase visibly froze. “Having a rich inventor father, obviously!” He shouted. “Haha, what else would I mean?”

Marcus decided to let it go. He turned to the others. "Adam? Bree?"

"I'm in the cooking club!" Adam said, then glared at Chase. "' Culinary club' ," he mocked. "Whatever."

"I'm not in a club." Bree tossed her hair over her shoulder. Leo raised an eyebrow at her. Marcus raised an eyebrow back (that's his move), and something on the board caught his eye.

He squinted at it. "'Drama club'? What's that?"

"It's a club for weird losers," Leo deadpanned, then suddenly perked up. "So it's perfect for you!"

Marcus ignored him. "Is it an acting club?"

"Sort of," Chase said. "They put together the school plays. Decorations, lights, and yeah, acting. Are you into that kind of thing?"

Marcus loved acting. It was like lying, but socially acceptable and with more flair. And he liked plays, had even watched a few of them before.

He shrugged. "It looks fun. I might check it out." Leo did say it was for ‘weird losers’. Best not to seem too enthusiastic.

The flyer said the club met at lunch on Tuesdays. Today was a Tuesday, so Marcus decided to attend. As an AI, he wasn’t certain whether “insanity” was possible for him. If it was, then watching Bree stuff her face while Adam made bad jokes and Chase chattered about some academic subject and Leo snarked—that was driving him there.

When he walked into the room, he was met by the sound of talking and the smell of pizza. There was a relatively small number of people present, which he didn’t like. Marcus was good at blending into crowds. It was in one-on-one conversation that he faltered.

“Hey, there!” A girl holding a clipboard appeared from nothingness. She was about the same height as Marcus, with light brown skin and curly hair that fell around her shoulders and a pencil tucked behind her ear.

Marcus blinked. He remembered that Dad used to startle him like that, attempting to glean some reaction. He got none. It wasn’t in Marcus’ nature to flinch—that was a human instinct. Marcus had bionic hearing, anyway, and his CPU processed information ten times faster than the human brain, so he wasn’t often caught off-guard to begin with.

That being said, he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this. With the Davenports it was easy: friendly and polite, the perfect brother and perfect son. But others his age tended to dislike the goody-two-shoes act, something that Chase, poor guy, didn’t seem to have learned yet. 

Still. Best not to be rude on first impressions, so he smiled at the girl. “Hi! Is this the drama club meeting?”

“Yep! Are you interested in joining,” she tilted her head and her smile fell a fraction, “Or are you just here for the pizza?”

“Uhh… the first one?”

Her face fell into a more neutral expression. “Cool. I’m Janelle, the unofficial-official leader of Drama Club! That over there is Owen, our props guy.” She gestured to a skinny, pale brunet who didn’t even glance up at them, too busy lathering paint over a canvas. Marcus couldn’t identify what , exactly, he was painting.

“And Jenny, our costume girl.” She gestured to a brown-skinned girl with hair pulled into an elaborate braid. The girl, Jenny, looked up and added, “And leader of the fashion club! Y’know, if you’re interested in that.”

“Yeah, right.” Janelle nodded. “Right now, we’re just voting on the spring play.” She handed Marcus the clipboard, which held a sheet with a list of play names and tally marks.

Marcus scanned the list, but he didn’t recognize any of the names. When in Rome , he thought, and put a mark under the one with the most already there.

He handed the clipboard back to Janelle. “ Oklahoma! , huh?” She tsked .

Marcus froze at the disapproval in her voice, then shrugged. “It’s the only name I recognized,” he lied.

When Janelle turned her back, Marcus Googled the play and recoiled. A musical. He hated musicals. One failed dance attempt from his childhood was enough to scare him away from the concept forever. He had vocal manipulation, of course, which allowed him to hit every note from baritone to soprano, but singing humiliated him.

He closed the window. Not like it mattered. He probably wouldn’t be around next semester, anyway.

II. 

Every morning, Mr. Davenport drove them to school, and every afternoon he either drove them home or had his chauffeur do it.

That surprised Marcus. Dad told him that his brother was selfish, and everything that Marcus had seen thus far—from Mr. Davenport’s behavior to the fact that the children he’d raised since toddlerhood called him Mr. Davenport —confirmed that. And yet he still took time out of his day to be involved in their lives, however loose that involvement was.

Today was a chauffeur day, which was odd because the moment they entered the house, Marcus heard Mr. Davenport’s voice. It came from another room and it sounded like he was trying to stay quiet, which was all Marcus needed to convince him to eavesdrop.

"—said she’ll take him in," Mr. Davenport said. Marcus tilted his head to get a better listen. "She still has to get approved by the state, but that should only take a few weeks. She wants to meet him—”

“MR. DAVENPORT!” Adam bellowed. “WE’RE HOME.”

Marcus slammed his hands over his ears, then quickly lowered them. He glanced around to make sure no one saw, and of course Leo was staring. Marcus raised an eyebrow and the other boy narrowed his eyes in either hatred or suspicion or both.

Mr. Davenport ended the call, but it didn’t matter. Marcus had heard enough of the conversation to infer what it was about: him.

They were getting rid of him. He had to act fast.

Mr. Davenport came into the room to greet them before promptly leaving to “take care of some business”. Since Tasha worked into the evening on weekdays, they were alone. Marcus waited until Leo left the room, then turned to the others. "What do you say we go to the fro-yo place?”

Bree groaned. “Normally, I’d be all for it,” she said. “But we have no way to get there.”

“Well,” Chase said, eyes sliding toward the garage, “We have one way.”

“You’re suggesting we take Mr. Davenport’s new car?” Marcus asked, surprised. Chase wasn’t usually one to break the rules.

Chase shrugged. “We’ll be back before he even notices we’re gone.”

"I'm in," Bree said.

"Me, too."

Marcus smiled. "Great!” Then he added, “Oh, but don't tell Leo. He'll snitch for sure."

“Should we really leave him here alone?” Adam frowned.

“He’ll be fine,” Bree said dismissively.

“Yeah,” Chase agreed. “You saw how he was acting at school. If he knew what we were doing, he’d flip.”

That was true. Leo seemed to have taken it upon himself to become Mr. Davenport’s “enforcer”. At school, he barely let anyone get within six feet of the trio, including Marcus.

Sneaking out of the house was easy. It was built to keep people out, not in (though it didn’t do that very well, either), and E.D.D.Y operated on a strict “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Plus, Marcus got the feeling that E.D.D.Y kind of… liked him, as much as the home security AI could like anything.

Marcus could drive, but obviously he couldn’t admit that, so Adam got behind the wheel. Marcus half-expected to end the trip in a pile of scrap metal, but the older boy was a surprisingly cautious driver. Actually, they all yelled at him to speed up several times.

“My grandma drives faster than this,” Marcus groaned. At this rate, the fro-yo shop would be closed by the time they arrived.

“You have a grandma?” Bree asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “She lives in Miami, I think. I’ve never actually met her.”

“Is she your dad’s mom or your mom’s mom?” Chase asked.

“My dad’s mom,” Marcus answered. “I never met my mom.”

“Why? Is she dead?”

Bree smacked her brother’s shoulder. “ Chase! You can’t just ask someone if their mom is dead!”

“It’s fine,” Marcus told her. Then, to Chase: “I don’t know if she’s alive or dead. Dad didn’t like to talk about her.”

Everyone was silent for a moment. “Huh,” Chase said. “Well, if you like, we could probably track her down. I’ve got a PhD in cyberstalking.”

Bree wrinkled her nose. “Don’t say that.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “It makes you sound even creepier than you are.”

Marcus smiled. “I’ll think about it,” he lied.

They got to the fro-yo shop about five seconds before it opened, which meant they had to brute-force their way inside. Marcus, being the hyperintelligent AI he was, snatched a cone out of a bystander’s hand instead of wasting his energy. He leaned against a wall as he ate, analyzing the chemicals in his fro-yo.

This has far more artificial flavoring than they claim , he noted. He considered raising a fuss and getting the business shut down, just for the fun of it, but his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his phone ringing.

It was Dad, of course. “Marcus!” He half-shouted. “Is something wrong?”

“I broke my phone,” he said matter-of-fact. “Mr. Davenport bought me a new one.”

“You couldn’t have called me sooner?”

“I was busy,” he snapped. “I think they’re going to get rid of me soon. I heard Mr. Davenport talking about it earlier.”

“Oh, shit,” Dad hissed. Marcus heard the sound of frantically shuffling papers. "I'll get you out of there soon. Well. As soon as I can," he promised. "It's just—Krane's being an ass, and there's still some things to set up, and I haven't even had time to practice my evil villain speech! Do they really not know I'm their dad? I—"

Marcus listened to him ramble.

"Hey, Dad," he interrupted. "What day is it?"

"What?"

"December 3rd," he said slowly. "What day is it?"

Silence.

Marcus sighed. Usually, he wouldn't really care. Sure, he'd kick up a fuss, but it would be all show. He knew Dad was forgetful at the best of times. But combined with his earlier comment… it stung.

I wonder if he remembers the others' birthdays?

He pushed the thought away.

“It’s my birthday,” he snapped. “My fifteenth birthday.”

“Oh, Marcus—”

“You didn’t even remember.”

“Is this really the time—”

“Do you even care?” He asked, and to his horror his voice sounded very small and hurt. He told himself he was just manipulating Dad into doing what he wanted, though his little displays of emotion stopped working about a year and a half ago.

“Of course I care about you, Marcus,” Dad said in an almost pleading tone. “You’re one of my best inventions.”

"I thought I was just some kid you built on your coffee table?" To his relief, he no longer sounded hurt, only angry.

"Jesus Chri—look." There was a loud sigh and the sound of shuffling, and Marcus knew that Dad was dragging his hand down his face. "For your 16th birthday, I'll get you a car. Whatever one you want. Deal?"

Marcus hesitated, because his 16th birthday was a whole year away, and he’d never asked for or even wanted a car so this seemed like an unfair trade. But he was his creator’s creation, and so eventually he grumbled, “It better be really expensive.”

“Of course .”

“And fast.”

“You got it, buddy.” Dad groaned. “You’re never letting me live this down, are you?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Depends how expensive that car is.”

He hung up.

Crap. He’d been so busy chewing Dad out, he forgot to tell him about the charger. Marcus sighed loudly and ran a hand through his hair, though no one was around to witness the display. Well, he’d only “slept in” by about thirty minutes. Not exactly the end of the world.

“Marcus! Here!” Chase materialized from the crowd, fro-yo cone in hand. “It’s birthday cake flavored,” he explained as he handed it to Marcus. “More sugar than I’d like, but it is a special day.” Marcus smiled in what he hoped was a grateful manner.

Last year for his birthday, he and Dad went to the nearest mall and had a competition to see who could shoplift the most without getting caught. Marcus lost, but it was fine—he broke out of his cuffs, found Dad, then they bought a movie and pizza. Victor showed up the next day asking for an upgrade and Dad made him sing “happy birthday”. It was embarrassing for all of them.

“Aw, look at him,” Dad had said, ruffling his hair. Marcus had scowled and smacked his hand away (he spent hours on his appearance every morning, only for Dad to mess it up!). “They grow up so fast. Soon he’ll be dressing in black and telling me it’s not a phase.” He sniffled and collapsed into Victor’s arms. Victor, who was still recovering from a minor surgery, only grunted and rolled his eyes.

His smile fell.

“You okay?” Chase asked.

Marcus didn't understand. He was obviously better than these three. Stronger, faster, smarter, impervious to pain and old age, unwaveringly loyal. But then why did Dad want them so bad?

(Why doesn't he want me?)

“Yeah,” Marcus said roughly. When we capture them, things will be different , he reminded himself. Adam, Bree, and Chase will be infinitely more bearable under the Triton app . “I just… wish my dad was here.”

Too close to the truth. He coughed to distract from the words. “Come on!” He said cheerfully. Chase blinked, startled by his sudden change in tone. “There are fifty other flav—”

His eyes widened. Leo was standing by the car, doubled over and out of breath, clearly having ran the whole way there. He straightened and locked eyes with Marcus. The two of them glared silently.

“What are you—oh. Leo ,” Chase said dejectedly.

They watched the boy march toward them, already yelling before he was even within earshot. “— wrong with you,” he wheezed. “I thought you died or got kidnapped or something, I almost called Mom —”

He grabbed Chase by the arm and dragged him off. Marcus followed. By the time they got to the car, Adam and Bree were there and arguing. Marcus watched, eyes flickering back and forth between them, Leo, and the car.

He had an idea. An awful, wonderful idea.

Marcus slid into the car and disabled the braking system, then set the GPS for the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. He put up a waterproof camera and gave it an eyebrow raise. Dad would love this.

He slid out of the car just as Leo turned and yanked the door open. “I’m taking the car back!” The boy screamed as he climbed in. “You better hope— woah , why’s the door closing?” He pulled the handle; the door didn’t budge an inch. “Uh, guys?”

Marcus waved. The car accelerated from zero to sixty in .5 seconds, so Leo’s answering scream was cut off.

It was a flawless plan. Adam, Bree, and Chase would be forced to reveal their bionics in order to save Leo. And if they failed, then Leo died. A win-win situation.

…that is, if they ever stopped arguing.

Marcus sighed. They really would be lost without him. He put on a concerned, horrified voice and tapped Adam’s arm. “Um… guys?”

“ What , Marcus?”

“I think your car just kidnapped Leo!”

Then it was a flurry of hissed words and aborted movements. Marcus knew they were trying to find a way to discreetly get rid of him so they could use their bionics to save Leo. He delighted in ruining their plans.

"Marcus!” Chase shouted. “Call Mr. Davenport and tell him what happened!"

“Really? But there’s no time!”

“Then you better hurry. Go! ” Chase gave him a little push, and Marcus forced his body to sway with it. Clearly, they weren’t going to knowingly use their bionics in front of him, so he walked around a corner and called Mr. Davenport. He gave the man a rundown of the situation, then hung up and stayed within earshot of the other three.

In the end, Bree used her speed, Chase used his forcefield and GPS, and Adam used his strength. More than enough proof. They saved Leo in the process, unfortunately, but Marcus supposed he couldn’t get everything he wanted.

The three whooped and hollered, clearly thrilled to have pulled off their plan.

Then Marcus stepped around the corner.

“What… just… happened? ” He pulled his face into exaggerated surprise. He may have overdone it, but he’d already set himself up as dramatic and emotional, so it was fine.

Bree looked at her wrist. “Oh, look at the time!” She said, voice three octaves higher than usual. “I have to… uh… get Leo?” She winced, clearly not impressed with her own lie, and sped off.

Chase closed his eyes.

“Okay.” Adam rolled up his sleeves. “No biggie. I’ll just knock him out.” He drew back his arm and marched forward.

“No, no, no.” Chase pulled his brother back. “We are not knocking him out. Marcus, there’s a very simple explanation for this…”

“Like what? ” Marcus pitched his voice up hysterically. “You’re all technologically enhanced freaks that Mr. Davenport grew in his basement?”

Chase blinked. Adam stared.

“Yeah!” Adam shouted. “That’s exactly what happened!”

Chase smacked him in the arm. Adam didn’t bat an eye, but did give his brother a light shove that propelled him into the nearest wall. Then Bree returned with Leo at about a hundred miles an hour.

Marcus rolled back his eyes and fainted.

He didn’t ‘wake up’ until Mr. Davenport arrived. They went home, and after more dramatics, Mr. Davenport pulled him to the side and explained to him that Adam, Bree, and Chase were technologically enhanced. Marcus listened with wide eyes, nodded and swore on his life that he wouldn’t tell anyone.

He noticed Leo watching him intently the whole time. He shrugged it off until the boy cornered him alone and asked, “You messed with the car, didn’t you?”

“What?” Marcus laughed. “No! Why would you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you waved at me. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not stupid .”

Marcus looked down at him. The smile remained on his face. “And so what if I did? How would you prove it?”

“I don’t need to prove it,” Leo snapped. “You tried to kill me. I’m telling the others right now.” He turned to leave the room.

The vase by his head shattered in an explosion of glass.

“You’re not telling anyone anything ,” Marcus hissed. The smile was gone, now, and his eyes glowed bright green.

“But—” Leo looked frantically between Marcus and what remained of the vase. “That— you —”

“Surprise, Leo!” Marcus held his arms out and grinned. “I’m bionic. Just like Adam, Bree, and Chase.” He dropped his arms and stepped closer. “And if you tell anyone what happened today, I might just expose your family’s little secret. Your siblings will be taken away, Davenport will be ruined forever, and you?”

Marcus laughed and poked Leo in the chest. The other boy stumbled backward and fell to the floor. “Who knows what’ll happen to you?”

“They’ll stop you before you can tell anyone,” Leo argued. He moved backwards on all fours like a crab.

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “ Will they?” He mocked. “I’m kind of… fast.” He moved at such a speed that to Leo, it must seem like he’d teleported, and knelt down to his level. “And very strong.”

Marcus picked the boy up with one hand and set him on his feet. He heard approaching footsteps—no doubt the others come to check on the noise—and began brushing imaginary dust off of Leo’s shoulders.

“Are you okay, Leo?” Marcus asked, morphing his face into a concerned expression as Mr. Davenport entered the room.

The man took in the scene with narrowed eyes. “What happened?”

Leo didn’t speak, so Marcus took it upon himself to explain. “Leo tripped and broke the vase.”

“Leo?” Mr. Davenport asked. Is that what happened? was the unspoken question. Though he’d earned the distrust, it still rankled.

With his back turned to Mr. Davenport, Leo glared at Marcus. “Yeah,” he said, and to his credit, his tone was even. “Sorry, Big D.”

III.

In the field of computer science, particularly AI, there was a popular thought experiment called the Chinese Room.

It was a counterargument to the Turing test, which claimed that if something was indistinguishable to a human it basically was one anyways. You know: ‘If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck…’

The Chinese Room looked at that argument and said this:

“There’s a man in a room. Occasionally he gets symbols on slips of paper. He doesn’t know what the symbols mean , but he has access to a database that tells him the syntax and grammar. ‘If you get symbol x , you should respond with symbols y and z’ , and so on and so forth. This way, the people outside the room could carry out a dialogue with the man inside.

But the man has no idea what he’s saying.”

It was an interesting proposal. Marcus discovered it within hours of his awakening while searching for answers on what he was, how he functioned, and what he was meant to do. Funny; he hated searching for those answers now, hated knowing them, but as per his nature, he could never forget.

At the time, he could hardly understand why it was a counterargument. Turing only stated that an AI was indistinguishable from humans—nothing more and nothing less. The test itself seemed to imply mimicry, if not require it. Surely something could be conscious, but not humanoid? Intelligent, but not conscious?

To him, the Room was a lifeboat. Marcus didn’t need to understand humans; he just needed to mimic them, and that was much easier. Statistics, algorithms, formats—he understood their importance before he even knew what they were. Like humans understanding that the heart was vital before they had a clue of its role in the body.

“Let me help,” Marcus begged. “I told you, I’m really, really good at this kind of stuff.”

“ No ,” Leo snapped. “Absolutely not. Nuh-uh.” Somehow, he’d gotten even less fun since the whole ‘attempted murder’ thing.

The symbols slid into his Room, and Marcus responded appropriately.

Humans were social animals. They could project their past experiences onto new ones and feel what someone else might be feeling. They called it ‘empathy’. It made them extremely susceptible to manipulation.

Marcus turned to Chase. “My dad and I used to do this kind of thing all the time.” Chase’s expression twisted, the textbook expression of strong emotion. Marcus hoped it was the right one. Hoped that Chase was imagining his Dad, who he often worked with, had died and now he was forced to beg his extended relatives for a chance to relive the happy memories.

Marcus hoped, because he couldn’t know .

A hole opened in the wall and eyes looked in; his Room was breached. Leo rolled his eyes. “Come onnnn ,” he groaned. “He’s manipulating you!”

Marcus had complete control over the coloring of his face. He utilized that skill to make himself flush pink. “Why do you hate me so much?” He demanded. “If this is about the guitar, I apologized for that. Weeks ago.”

Shame and protectiveness. Guilt-tripping.

“Yeah, Leo.” Chase turned to glare at the other boy. “You’re being a jerk.”

Leo gaped. Behind Chase’s back, Marcus smirked.

Leo’s face fell, and he sat back, accepting his fate. “Fine,” he said. “He can work with us.”

Marcus settled in and they got to work. He wasn’t lying when he said that he built things with Dad all the time—Marcus was welder, crane, and calculator all rolled into one, precise down to the decimal but lacking the stamina and attention issues that plagued humans. He went about his work with a tenacity that Dad often described as “robotic”.

With anyone else Marcus might’ve dialed it down, afraid of revealing his superintelligence, but Leo already knew and Chase wasn’t perceptive enough to connect the dots. That wasn’t a judgment; just observation. Humans followed patterns like everything else.

Not that he didn’t notice . Eventually, Chase asked, "So your dad taught you how to do all this?"

Marcus nodded.

"If you don't mind me asking…” Chase cleared his throat. “What was he like?"

“Yeah, was he as evil as you are?” Leo asked. Chase elbowed him in the ribs and he yelped.

For all of Marcus’ intelligence, he wasn’t so good at multitasking. He could switch between tasks faster than most humans could comprehend, sure, but that wasn’t multitasking . Humans were very mentally taxing; social interactions as important as this would require his full cognitive abilities.

So he froze, his focus momentarily shattered. He compiled the data ( accessed his database ) and re-oriented: for them, this was real . They’d really lost a brother, an uncle, a father. He wondered how he’d feel, if some mysterious family member of Dad’s suddenly dropped dead and left behind a child.

He didn’t know. Emotions, but no empathy. It was a language, alright, but not Chinese.

Marcus looked down at the parts in his hands. "He was kind of like Mr. Davenport," he said, slowly, to give himself time to think, "He really liked to invent. And monologue. Uh… I don’t know how else to describe him. We didn’t have much. But he really tried.” He snorted and rolled his eyes. “Most of the time.”

Chase’s eyes tracked the movement. “Most of the time?” He echoed.

Marcus shrugged. “No one’s perfect. I get the feeling he didn’t really want to be a father so much as… he just got stuck with me.”

Pattern recognition. Data points: Dad was happiest when he spoke of the Davenports and saddest when he stared at their pictures. Conclusion: revenge made him happy, and the reasons for his revenge made him sad.

Data points: Dad made Marcus call him ‘Dad’. Dad did not view Marcus as even vaguely human. Marcus’ entire reason for existence was right here in this house.

Conclusion: Douglas Davenport wanted to be a father, alright, but not Marcus’ .

“Ah, so that’s what’s wrong with you.” Leo nodded sagely. “Daddy issues. I should’ve known.”

For just a moment, imperceptible to all but maybe Bree, the Room faltered.

Marcus knew how to respond: laugh it off and keep it light or fake hurt and incite anger. He knew how he should respond, according to different sets of rules: to strengthen bonds with Leo, choice A, to strengthen bonds with Chase, to sow discord, to make Dad proud, choice B.

And he knew how he wanted to respond: with unyielding, unreasoning fury.

Because what did humans know about empathy? What did Leo know about his daddy issues? What gave them the right to joke about his dead Dad who wasn't really dead or really his dad? What gave them the right to be sad? They weren't raised by the man for five years, didn't build security mechs disguised as vacuums and bicker over interior decoration and watch Funeral Mishaps late at night.

Selfish creatures, all of them, who could only imagine others’ pain through the lens of their own. And these were the ones Dad wanted.

(He remembered his earlier question— I wonder if Dad remembers their birthdays? —and had a terrible suspicion that he knew the answer.)

Marcus had his own internal rules, rigorously built and maintained since the day of his creation. He knew how to respond to anger when he didn’t want others to realize: grit his teeth, even if it didn’t make him feel any better.

Trapped between the walls of his Room, it was all he could do.

Marcus pushed the robot toward Chase. “You can program it.” He scrunched up his face in what he hoped resembled an apology. “I’m not so good at coding.”

He watched Chase code as he let his anger cool down. If Marcus’ jaw clenched any tighter, he’d shatter his teeth, and that, too, was part of the Room. He didn’t consciously think about it anymore—not that it was instinct . Marcus didn’t have such luxuries. Every choice he made, even the most rash or rote, was deliberate. He could perform the same action at the same time in the same way every single day for the rest of his existence, and he’d have to put the same amount of thought into it the millionth time as he did the first.

So he couldn’t really have instinct but he couldn’t forget, either. He’d watched and learned which movements were associated with anger, what twitches conveyed happiness and which were just a result of excess energy. Then he learned how to mimic them. One time became two times and two became two thousand and at this point, it was reflex. Second nature. Method acting.

But he could never forget.

“Does your superintelligence help with that?” He asked. His words may have been a little too fast, but he couldn’t be sure. Everything always seemed so slow to him.

Even so, Chase’s fingers flew across the screen at such speeds that Marcus wondered if he, too, had enhanced speed. It wasn’t on his list of hidden abilities , he thought, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Dad put it in and then forgot. Or if Chase just developed it on his own .

“Well, yeah.” Chase scoffed. “I’m the—”

“Smartest person in the world ,” he and Leo said in sync.

Marcus blinked, then decided to move on from this strange occurrence. “So what else can you do?” He leaned in, pitched his voice up, widened his eyes by the slightest margin. All indicators of curiosity.

Chase fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It was almost disappointing. “I also have forcefields and molecular kinesis,” Chase rattled off proudly. “And bionic senses. That’s the real reason I have to wear the earplu— OW .” Chase rubbed his arm and frowned at his brother. “What was that for?”

Leo lowered his voice, though he was barely more than two feet away and Marcus could hear him just fine. “You don’t think that maybe giving the new guy a complete list of your bionics just might be a bad idea?”

“ Leo ,” Chase snapped. His face went flat in a way Marcus had never seen from him before. Anger. Marcus’ brow went up in surprise. “Marcus is a part of the family. You’re the only one that has a problem with him.”

“I know, but—”

“That’s enough .”

Leo fell silent. Marcus kind of, almost (not really) felt bad for him.

They continued to build, and when they took a short break, Mr. Davenport came to check on them. “Oooh,” he said. “Is this for the annual robot smackdown?”

“Yeah!” Chase said proudly. He started explaining everything they’d done for it, and Mr. Davenport made some suggestions, then asked if he could change a few things. Marcus was hesitant, but Chase and Leo allowed it.

“Changing a few things” apparently meant destroying and rebuilding it entirely.

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “We probably should’ve seen that coming,” he said.

“Yeah.” Leo nodded. “Probably.”

They rebuilt it in time for the smackdown. Of course, in another move that they really should’ve seen coming, Mr. Davenport entered the smackdown with his own robot.

It got down to the final round: their robot, Josh (they really shouldn’t have put Chase in charge of naming it) vs. Mr. Davenport’s robot.

Marcus narrowed his eyes. “Leo,” he said. “Give me the remote.”

“What? No way!” Leo shielded the remote with his body.

Marcus rolled his eyes and snatched it away from him with his molecular kinesis. Chase’s back was turned, so he didn’t notice.

When the other two weren’t looking, he’d outfitted Josh with some… enhancements. Just as a last resort. He activated one of them now—the heat vision—and melted off the side of Mr. Davenport’s robot. While it was recovering, he used the spikes on its head to grab Mr. Davenport’s robot and smash it against the wall.

Needless to say, they won.

Chase practically threw him a parade procession into the house. The whole nine yards: whooping and cheering and chanting his name. He even attempted to pick Marcus up, then swiftly dropped him.

“You’re heavy ,” he said, frowning.

Marcus scoffed. “ Rude .”

“Ooh, let me try!” Adam shouted, and then he tossed Marcus over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and spun him around. Marcus spluttered furiously. “So why are we doing this?” Adam asked.

“Because Marcus ,” Chase beamed, “Is a genius .”

Adam eventually set him down—gently, as if afraid of breaking him. He made no comment on his weight. Even Marcus, who was much heavier than the average human, was still light as a feather in the face of Adam’s bionic strength.

Marcus noticed that Leo stood dejectedly off to the side. Marcus’ eyes flickered from him to Adam and back again.

He grinned. “Leo helped, too!” He added. “The spikes were his idea!”

“Oh, really?” Adam said, and a moment later Leo screamed as he was tossed into the air.

Marcus laughed, and for once it wasn’t forced or fake. Mr. Davenport ruffled his hair (the man had apologized for his behavior, though Marcus couldn’t help but think it was insincere) in a move reminiscent of Dad. Suddenly, Marcus thought: I could’ve had this .

It was an odd thought. Generally speaking, the android didn’t waste much time on could’ve-been’s . That was Dad’s thing; at least one of them had to stay in the present.

But the idea stuck like glue, and Marcus followed it to its logical conclusion: if Mr. Davenport hadn’t interfered, he would’ve grown up with these three. They wouldn’t even need the Triton app—they’d obey Dad as their father and view Marcus as their brother. Marcus could’ve built death rays with Chase and robbed stores with Adam and Bree. He could’ve have siblings .

But then again , he reminded himself, if they’d stayed, I wouldn’t exist .

Right. Because Marcus only existed for the Plan, and the Plan only existed because Dad’s creations were taken away from him. His processors were flooded with a painful emotion; something like jealousy.

He shoved the emotion down. I don’t care , he thought viciously. I’m better than human. And I’m better than them.

A hand slapped down on his shoulder. Marcus almost dismembered it before realizing who it belonged to. “You okay, buddy?” Mr. Davenport asked.

Marcus, too distracted to put thought into the answer, fell back on the Room. He nodded and smiled. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just really happy to be here.”

IV.

(That night, Tasha asked: “So we’re keeping him?”

Donald sighed. “I guess so.”)

Chapter Text

“Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war!” — William Shakespeare

I.

Marcus tilted his head. “What are you doing?”

Usually, he would’ve been awake and aware about thirty minutes ago, but his charger had only deteriorated further in the past several weeks. Now he operated on 90% capacity—not a huge change, but enough that it was noticeable. His reaction times were slower and his bionics, when he used them, were far more imprecise than he was used to.

Soon, Dad promised. You’ll be leaving soon. But soon kept stretching on and on.

Chase giggled maniacally. “Giving Adam,” he pulled the rope tighter, “A taste of his own medicine.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “You have a forcefield,” he pointed out. “And telekinesis.”

“Molecular kinesis,” he corrected. “And this is way more fun.” He giggled again and rubbed his hands together.

Marcus and Bree shared a look. If Marcus weren’t a spy, he suspected that he and Bree might’ve been good friends, or at least allies. As it was, obligated to avoid the more perceptive Davenports.

“Alright,” he said with a shrug. “Have fun with that.”

II.

Adam dislocated his shoulder. Everyone was surprised by this.

“Is this the first time he’s ever gotten hurt?” He asked Bree at school. Adam was so shaken up by the event that he’d stayed home. Marcus had never experienced pain, but even he knew that was dramatic.

Bree chuckled. “Oh, he’s come close a few times,” she said. “But yeah, this is the first.”

“Does his superstrength make him more durable or something?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that.” Chase snorted. “Probably just dumb luck. You know what they say: God favors drunks and idiots.” But his tone lacked the usual bite and he wouldn’t meet Marcus’ eyes. Marcus supposed he felt guilty, though he wasn’t sure why. Adam terrorized Chase constantly. If Marcus were in Chase’s position, he would’ve done far worse.

“Marcus!”

The android froze and turned in the direction of the voice. It was Janelle, fighting her way through the crowd with a clipboard in one hand and a stack of papers in the other.

“Marcus,” she repeated, out of breath. “Can you help pass out these audition posters?” She handed him the stack before he could answer. “You’re auditioning, right?” She asked.

Marcus cursed his inability to plan ahead. He hadn’t told the others about Drama Club, assuming he’d be long gone by now, and likewise hadn’t told Janelle that he planned to drop out. “Yep,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

Janelle nodded and wrote his name down. Theoretically speaking, Marcus could’ve just said that he was too busy to help with the play, but then he’d have to drop out of Drama Club. And he couldn’t do that. Drama Club was his one escape from the Davenport-Dooley household.

Marcus heard loud, obnoxious breathing. He rolled his eyes and, without looking, reached behind himself and pushed.

His hand connected with a frail body.

Marcus sighed loudly, though it came out as more of a hydraulic hiss , and turned to glare. “What are you doing, Dooley?”

“What did she want?” Leo asked, scraping himself off the lockers.

“Just saying hi.” Marcus hid the stack of papers behind his back. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

To his surprise, when he left for the auditions, Leo followed him. Marcus knew that protesting would be suspicious, but nonetheless threw the others a ‘you seein’ this?’ expression. Bree watched with narrowed eyes and Chase only shrugged.

The second they were out of earshot, Marcus leaned in and hissed, “What are you doing?”

“Chase and I had a talk,” Leo said, putting his hand on his chest in a gesture of sincerity. “And he was right. I’ve been unnecessarily rude to you, and, seeing as how we’re step-brothers now—adoptive brothers? Adoptive step-brothers?—I figured we should probably get along. Soooo … we cool?”

Marcus stared.

“No!” He shouted. “No, we are not ‘ cool’ . We’ve never been cool, we never will be cool, and if you know what’s good for you—” He shoved Leo and the other boy stumbled backward. “You’ll turn around and walk the other way.”

Leo’s face fell into a neutral expression. “Look, man,” he said, brushing imaginary dust off his shoulders. “Haven’t you ever heard that expression ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer’? That’s what I’m doing. If I can’t turn you in, and I can’t stop you, then I guess all I can do is follow you around 24/7 so I know exactly what you’re doing and when you’re doing it.”

Marcus gritted his teeth, caught off-guard by the sound reasoning. What will it take to get rid of this guy? He thought. He’d misled, intimidated, threatened, and attempted to kill Leo, but still he stuck around. At this point he suspected that even if his murder attempt succeeded, Leo's ghost would've haunted him out of spite.

He scowled, then let his expression fall. Dad often said that Marcus’ resting face was ‘creepy’, borderline ‘terrifying’. Leo wasn’t immune to its effects—his eyes widened and he shifted backward as if preparing to run.

“Fine,” Marcus spat in a tone that didn’t match his face. “Do what you want.”

Leo was silent until they reached the auditorium, at which point he whooped in what Marcus assumed was triumph. “So you did join Drama Club!” He said, far too loudly for Marcus’ liking. “Man, just wait ‘till I tell Bree—”

“Marcus!” Janelle waved him over to the front row. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Can you help me with the auditions?”

“Sure,” Marcus said. “I love judging people.”

“Hey, Janelle!” Leo smiled and pushed—well, attempted to push—Marcus out of the way.

Janelle blinked down at him. “Leo?” She asked. “What are you doing here?”

“Signing up for the play, of course!”

Marcus raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said this club was for weird los—"

"ANYWAYS." Leo shoved him more frantically. Marcus figured remaining immobile wouldn’t be too suspicious; it was well-known that Leo had the upper body strength of a koala. “So, uh, how about that…audition?” Leo’s voice cracked and his smile widened.

Janelle looked at him. “ You’re auditioning?” She snorted in disbelief.

Leo frowned. “You don’t have to sound so surprised .”

“You’ve never shown interest in theater before,” she said.

“I’m broadening my horizons,” Leo huffed. “So… what am I auditioning for?”

Janelle rolled her eyes and handed him an audition sheet. “I hope you’re good at improv.”

“Don’t hope too hard,” Marcus stage-whispered. Leo elbowed him in the chest—bad move, that’s where most of the armor was—and winced in pain.

Janelle looked between them. “Do you two know each other?”

“No,” Marcus said, and at the same time Leo said: “Yes, unfortunately.”

The other boy rolled his eyes. “ Dude ,” he spat. “We live together. You’re my brother. Admitting you know me won’t kill you.”

“You don’t know that,” Marcus deadpanned. “It’s never been tried.”

Janelle watched them bicker with a bemused expression. “You two are brothers? ”

“Step-cousins, adopted brothers. Adopted step-cousins?” Leo waved a hand. “I’ll explain later. Right now, it’s my time to shine!” He smiled broadly and trounced onstage.

Once Leo was out of earshot, Janelle turned to Marcus with an expression that reminded him briefly of Leo. He shuddered at the mere suggestion.  “You never said you lived with the Davenports.” It wasn’t a question, technically speaking, but Marcus had learned that most statements were actually promptings for more information.

He shrugged. “It never came up. Our dads are brothers, so when my dad died I went to them.”

Janelle got that awkward, sad expression all humans did when he brought up dead relatives. It was an expression he’d utilized time and time again, but on Janelle’s face it made him uncomfortable. “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”

Marcus waved her off. “It’s fine. Let’s go make fun of Leo, huh?”

After Leo’s performance (which was mildly okay, Marcus had to admit), Janelle elbowed him in the ribs. Marcus subtly moved away—Janelle was smart, and it wouldn’t do for her to notice how rigid and non-malleable his body was compared to an actual humans’. Luckily, she didn’t seem to notice or acknowledge the movement, only leaning in to ask, “Aren’t you going to audition?”

Marcus shrugged. “I might move before the play happens. The Davenports aren’t sure about keeping me,” he lied.

“You could try out anyway, and we’ll call you an understudy?” Janelle suggested, tapping her pencil against the clipboard.

Marcus raised an eyebrow. “I haven’t even auditioned yet,” he pointed out. “Isn’t that nepotism or something?”

Janelle rolled her eyes. “ Please . I have more professionalism than that.” Then she tilted her head at Leo as he climbed off stage and raised her voice, “If you’re really worried about it, Leo and I can judge together.”

“Yeah!” Leo agreed. “I mean, what?”

Marcus nodded. “Yeah, that oughta balance out.”

“What are we doing?” Leo asked.

In the end, Marcus was cast as an understudy for Jud Fry, the antagonist of the play (“Makes sense, since you’re a villain ,” Leo muttered.) and Leo was cast as Will Parker. Marcus raised an eyebrow as he read the cast description. “‘ He is interested in Ado Annie, but isn’t the brightest bulb ’,” he snickered. “Yeah, that sounds like you.”

“Jud is a cowboy,” Leo pointed out. “I look forward to seeing that.”

“Farmhand,” Marcus corrected.

“That’s just the gender neutral version of cowboy,” Leo said dismissively.

Marcus scoffed. “They’re two completely different things. Cowboys herd cattle, farmhands work on farms.”

“Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.”

“I think I’m the authority on this, since I’m actually Southern.”

“You are?”

“Yup. Born and raised in Texas. Yee-haw,” he deadpanned.

Because his torment was neverending, he wasn’t even afforded the mercy of going home at the usual time.

As the Davenport-Dooleys made toward the school exit, Principal Perry’s booming voice called out Bree’s name. Bree made the smart decision and started walking faster, but without the use of her bionics, Perry could easily catch up—and she did, grabbing the teen by the scruff like a misbehaving kitten. Probably a tactic she’d learned long ago, judging by the everpresent smell of cat urine that followed her like a ghost.

Leo made the even smarter decision and abandoned his sister. “Sorry, Bree!” He screamed as he bolted toward the door.

“Not so fast, Dooley!” Perry stuck out her arm and Leo rammed straight into it, collapsing to the ground as if she were made of metal instead of flesh and bone. Marcus briefly entertained the possibility of Perry being an android, then dropped it immediately. Too horrifying to consider.

“Thing 2, or whatever your name is, I’m calling home to complain about your behavior .” She shook Bree by the collar in a rough manner that couldn’t have been legal, then looked down at Leo as if he were a dead bug on the sidewalk. “And Dooley, Thistle wants you to stay after school. Something about a missing assignment?”

“Wh–what?” Leo sputtered.

Perry didn’t allow him the time to recover. “GET MOVING!” She bellowed. They scattered—even Marcus, though she hadn’t been addressing him directly. What a terrible woman , he thought. He’d get her fired if watching her terrorize children weren’t so amusing.

The moment they turned the corner, Leo spun around to face him. “ You .” He poked Marcus in the chest. Marcus raised an eyebrow. “Are going to get us out of this, Captain Eyebrow.”

The eyebrow inched higher. "Why on Earth would I do that, Tiny McLittlestein ?" Two could play the nickname game.

“Well, it’s your fault this happened in the first place.”

“ My fault?”

“If you hadn’t snuck off to the auditions, I wouldn’t have had to follow you!”

“Snuck off?” Marcus repeated, incredulous. “Had to?”

“And,” Leo marched on, “Allow me to reenact what will happen if you don’t help us.” He took a deep breath, then opened his mouth and screeched, "MOM —"

Marcus slapped a hand over his mouth and glared, eyes glowing green. "You realize I could easily kill your entire family, ri—AEU GHHHH." He snatched his hand away and wiped it on his shirt. "YOU LICKED ME."

"And I'll do it again!" Leo exclaimed. "So stay back!"

Marcus gaped at him. "What is wrong with you?"

Leo grinned. "ADHD and a dash of childhood trauma," he replied. "Makes you real funny. So you have superspeed and lazers and I'm guessing superstrength… what else do you have?"

Marcus gaped for another moment, then blinked, shook his head, and turned on his heel and walked away.

As he probably should’ve expected, Leo followed him. “You’re bionic,” he continued. “Did your dad make you bionic? Is that why he was in hiding?”

Marcus glared. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“Do you have vocal manipulation like Bree?” He said like he hadn’t heard Marcus at all. When Marcus remained silent, he took another deep breath.

Marcus looped his arm around the other boy’s neck and cut off his shout. “ Yes , I have vocal manipulation,” he said. “And superspeed.” He released Leo—killing him at this exact moment would probably be counterproductive.

But an android can dream, he thought.

Leo coughed and rubbed at his neck. “So you have Adam and Bree’s powers,” he rasped. “Do you have—”

Marcus raised a hand and the other boy flinched backward.

“Alright, alright!” Leo shouted. “No more questions,” he held up a finger, “But I’ve got a plan.”

“I’m thrilled,” Marcus snarked.

“ Bree will go home and pretend to be Davenport in order to fool Perry,” Leo said, valiantly ignoring him, “ You stay here and pretend to be Davenport in order to fool Mrs. Thistle.”

“That sounds like an awful plan, with horrible repercussions for both of us if it goes wrong,” Marcus said.

“I’ve got my mom on speed dial.”

Marcus—the android made to feel no pain nor guilt, the terminator designed for one mission and one mission only—sighed. “I’m in.”

Leo clapped. “Great! I gave Ms. Thistle your phone number, so just wait for her to call you!”

“How did you get my phone number?”

But Leo was already gone.

When the teacher called, Marcus made sure to match not only his voice, but his cadence, to Mr. Davenport’s. It wasn’t really necessary, since Mrs. Thistle was one step away from being legally deaf, but Marcus Aurelius Davenport had never half-assed a performance and he wasn’t going to start now. He even, he admitted, had a bit of fun with it—’ oh, our Leo isn’t the brightest, I’m so sorry he did this to you’ —but knee-deep into his act, he heard the tell-tale sound of Mr. Davenport’s car.

Mr. Davenport was here. He was here .

“You know what, Mrs. Thistle?” He shouted (again: the woman was practically deaf). “I’ll come up there and talk to Leo myself.” He hung up without another word and turned to make his escape. The school doors opened and he put on a burst of superspeed.

But it was the late afternoon, and his battery was low. He didn’t have the mental capacity to accurately calculate the speed and force of his trajectory in such a small space.

To put it more simply: he tripped.

He turned a corner too quickly and went sailing into a row of lockers at nearly sixty miles an hour, leaving behind a Marcus-sized dent. He wasn’t stunned , per se, but he did lay there for longer than he normally would’ve as he tried to think of a plan.

“What was that? ” A familiar voice murmured.

Marcus sprang to his feet and went around the corner. “Mr. Davenport!” He said, running into the man and wrapping him in a hug. “You’re here!” Don’t look around the corner, don’t look around the corner—

“Marcus?” Mr. Davenport said, brow furrowed in confusion. “What was that noise? And why are you here?”

He threw Leo under the bus immediately. “Leo had to correct some work, and I stayed behind to help him.” He tilted his head. “Didn’t he tell you?” Anger was the best distraction.

He could see the man’s jaw clenching. “No. He didn’t.”

Before Marcus could dig Leo’s grave any deeper, the boy himself appeared at the other end of the hall. He put his hands on his knees, clearly out of breath, and panted, “Don’t—listen—to—him!”

Then Bree stepped out of Perry’s office.

For a moment, they all stared at each other, frozen in fear or confusion or both: a four-way stand-off. Then Mr. Davenport looked at Leo, pinpointing the source of the problem, and his eyes narrowed. “Leo,” he said slowly. “What’s going on?”

Leo looked between Bree and Mr. Davenport and Marcus and back again. “Okay,” he sputtered. “So, uh, here’s the thing.” And he looked at Marcus.

The android narrowed his eyes. You better not.

Leo took a deep breath. “Marcus is bi—”

“—SEXUAL!” Marcus screamed, “I’m bisexual.”

He burst into dramatic sobs.

Complete and utter silence. Then Mr. Davenport sighed heavily, wearily, and reached out a hand to put on his shoulder. “Shh, shh, Marcus, it’s okay. You don’t have to cry.” His tone implied: in fact, I’d really rather you didn’t . “I mean, I’m fine with it. Obviously. I—wait, you know Douglas was trans, right?"

Marcus sniffled and peaked out from above his hands. "Yeah, and you hated him."

Mr. Davenport sputtered. "I didn't hate – that had nothing to do with—" He waved his arms and finally shouted, " I'm trans!"

"Oh," Marcus said. "Congratulations?"

“Just get in the car!" Mr. Davenport turned to Leo. “You are in so much trouble ,” he hissed. “Outing people is not cool!”

“I—I didn’t—!”

Marcus smirked and high-fived Bree as they passed each other.

When they got home, he found a strange sight: Chase and Adam playing some sort of video game. Together. With each other. And no one was more injured than they were this morning.

“Adam!” Marcus exclaimed in a pleasantly surprised tone. “I thought leaving the lab was ‘too dangerous’?”

Adam shrugged. “I got over that.”

When his attention was back on the game, Mr. Davenport leaned in and explained, “Chase got stuck in his capsule and almost burned alive—long story—so Adam broke it to save him.”

“Oh.” Marcus looked back at the two. “Huh.”

When Mr. Davenport spoke about Dad, it was sometimes with irritation, sometimes with sorrow, but always with a certain measure of fondness. Dad never had anything good to say about Mr. Davenport, but when he stared at old pictures his face was often more sad than angry.

He supposed brothers did always love each other. For better or worse.

“Hey, Chase,” Bree asked, “What does ‘bisexual’ mean?”

Chase’s game character ran off a cliff and died. The boy didn’t even seem to notice, instead whipping his head around to stare at Bree. “Huh?”

Adam piped in: “She said ‘what does bisexual—’”

“I know what she said!” Chase shouted. His goodwill toward his brother seemed to be fading fast. “But why is she asking?”

He looked at Bree. Bree looked at Marcus. Chase connected the dots. "Marcus is bisexual?"

Chase squinted at him. Marcus raised an eyebrow back.

"Does it mean he’s a girl now?" Bree asked excitedly.

"No, Bree." Adam rolled his eyes and said in a 'duh' tone of voice, "It means he can write with both hands."

Chase let out a long-suffering sigh. " No , the word you're thinking of is ambidextrous. Bisexual means—"

Marcus made his escape down the hall. Even if his battery life weren’t fading dangerously fast, he had little interest in hearing this conversation. He heard Bree screech 'you can do that?!' just before he shut his door.

Then someone knocked.

Marcus sighed and opened it. Of course, it was Leo. “Just to be clear,” the boy muttered. “I’m not homophobic or anything. I hate you because you’re a horrible person. Not because you’re bisexual.”

“That’s oddly heartwarming,” Marcus deadpanned.

He slammed the door in his face.

III.

Three days after he was created, Marcus Davenport met Victor Krane.

“My partner is coming to visit. A real evil guy. Act nice, okay?” Those were Dad’s only words of advice.

Marcus wasn’t sure what to expect, yet somehow, Victor was exactly as he’d pictured him. Taller than Dad and much taller than Marcus, scowling and dressed in all-black. His face wasn’t yet scarred, and his dark hair was buzzed short.

“What is this?” The man asked flatly, glaring down at Marcus like the android was no more than a bug he intended to crush.

But Dad said ‘act nice’. So, the Room still fresh on his mind, he smiled and extended a hand. “Hello,” he’d said. “I’m Marcus.”

Victor didn’t take it. He let the hand drop.

“This is that project I was telling you about!” Douglas grabbed Marcus by the shoulder and pulled him close. “An advanced android with all of Adam, Bree, and Chase’s abilities, plus some.”

Victor glared. “This is not what I pay you for.”

“Nope,” Dad agreed, “This is better. Marc, show him what you can do.”

Marcus stared, unsure what exactly he meant by that. He could do many things.

Dad sighed. “Lift something,” he commanded. “With your kinesis?”

Marcus obeyed. He lifted the nearest, biggest thing: Victor Krane.

After he set him down, Dad giggled and pulled him even closer. “Faster than Bree, stronger than Adam, smarter than Chase,” he rattled off. “He can use multiple abilities at the same time, and he doesn’t have to worry about pesky things like sleep or food . Who knows? He might even be able to go toe-to-toe with you!”

Then Dad and Victor stared at each other for a long moment.

Marcus’ Room wasn’t advanced enough to realize it at the time, but later he’d put the pieces together: that was a threat. Dad was threatening Victor.

And Marcus was the gun.

No matter how many vacations they went on, card games they played, or how genial Victor acted, Marcus kept that understanding for the rest of his life. He took to his new role with ease; it was only an extension of his other one, after all.

But what use was a gun with no bullets?

“Why are you yelling?” Marcus leaned against the wall as he asked. He’d taken to conserving energy however he could, whenever he could.

Mr. Davenport jumped and sputtered. Leo, however, didn’t hesitate. “We’re going on strike,” he announced, glaring at the man, “The others want a day off.”

Marcus blinked—his mental processors were a little slower than usual—and tilted his head at Mr. Davenport, genuinely confused. “Just one day off?” He said. “Don’t they deserve that? They work really hard.”

And he had to admit, they did . Dad usually wanted Marcus’ help with something, whether it be taking out the trash or robbing a bank, but the android had only one mission (technically two). Mr. Davenport sent the three on missions constantly . He’d want a day off, too.

Mr. Davenport scoffed. “They get days off!” He said. “It’s not like I work them to the bone.”

“When was our last ‘day off’?” Bree asked, putting air quotes around the words. “And being at school doesn’t count.”

“Not important!” Mr. Davenport barked. “Look, this discussion is over.”

“But—”

“OVER!”

But it was far from over. Mr. Davenport cut the lab’s power, which effectively turned it into an ice box.

Marcus tapped the capsule that all the Daven-kids were squeezed into. “Is it warm in there?” He asked, half-curious, half-sarcastic.

“Not really,” Chase said miserably.

Marcus felt great . His fans slowed to accommodate the temperatures, allowing him to save battery life. He figured the others were too busy freezing to notice his slowed breathing, but just in case he exaggerated the movement of his chest and shoulders.

“Why does Mr. Davenport send you on missions, anyways?” Marcus asked. He’d assumed it was for money or fun, since that was Dad’s primary motivation, but Adam, Bree, and Chase never returned with anything but bruises.

“To save people,” the three of them chorused like it was obvious.

“Yeah, but why? ”

They all gave him that look, the one that said he was being strange and he should drop the topic now before they all realized just how strange he really was. Marcus backpedaled quickly. “I mean, it’s like you said, right? You work hard, and you’re just kids. Why couldn’t he get someone else to save the world for a day or two?”

Chase scoffed. “No one else can do what we do.”

Marcus resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow. You have no idea how wrong you are, he thought. Out loud, he said: “Still. You don’t have to go on missions, right? Strictly speaking.”

“It’s not the missions that are the problem,” Chase said.

Bree nodded. “We like helping people.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed, “I just wish…”

“That we had more freedom,” Bree said in a rush. Like the very thought was forbidden.

Marcus was an actor by the very nature of his existence, but it was more than that; he had a genuine love of the art. Dad assumed it was because he enjoyed tricking people (and he did), but that’s not where the love stemmed from. There was a certain thrill in being seen as human; it felt like gaining insight into a secret shared by all of humanity.

It was inevitable that he developed an interest in psychology. It was only a passing fancy, but for a creature with perfect memory, the internet, and a mind that could consume information at a rate the human brain could scarcely comprehend, ‘passing’ encompassed quite a bit.

He’d skimmed the sections on child development (not like he planned to be around a lot of children), but again, most intelligent AI in the world.

All that to say: Marcus knew that trauma wasn’t good for developing brains. Neither was being raised in a basement, for that matter. He could imagine why someone would desire freedom , after fifteen years of that.

Marcus thought of Dad’s hand on his shoulder so long ago. Just three days after he was created—he’d hardly even left the lair yet—and he had two missions. Two life-long burdens.

He clenched his hands and knew, down deep in his code or his metal or what-have-you, that he wasn’t as strong as he used to be. As he was made to be.

(Unbidden, a question rose in his mind: if he was built for this mission, if it was his only purpose in life, then what happened to him when it was over? )

"I’m on your side.”

He blinked. The words were deliberate, even true, and yet—

“What Mr. Davenport is doing totally isn’t fair.”

—he never planned to say them.

Before he could say anything else, the lights flicked on. With a whoosh , so did the heating. The capsule popped open and the others tumbled out one by one, shrieks drowned out by Mr. Davenport's much louder bellow, "Okay, strike's over! NASA called—"

"They want their nerd back?" Bree asked. The others laughed and Adam high-fived her.

"Ha, ha . Funny every time. No, they moved the gravity belt presentation up to tomorrow. So suit up and get ready to practice!"

No one moved.

"Oh, really, guys?" The man scoffed. "Leo?" Leo crossed his arms. "Marcus?" Marcus shrugged and slid closer to the others.

A part of him felt nervous. Mr. Davenport did, after all, still have the power to kick him out at any time. A much larger part of him felt nothing but smug satisfaction.

"Oh, alright!" Mr. Davenport threw up his arms. "Fine! Pout. I'll be upstairs when you realize you need me."

He left and a moment later the lab's power shut off. Marcus realized that the situation would never progress unless someone took action, and before he could really think about the repercussions, he stepped forward. “I’ll go talk to him,” he offered.

Leo may have protested, but by then Marcus was already gone.

He took a deep breath to cool off his systems before he went into Mr. Davenport’s office. This is what Dad would want, he told himself. Anything that inconveniences Mr. Davenport is part of the Plan.

(And he was only doing it for Dad.)

“Marcus,” Mr. Davenport greeted as he opened the door. “I hope they sent you to apologize.”

Marcus winced, awkward and apologetic. People were more likely to listen if you didn’t outright call them wrong. “Uh, no . Actually, they sent me to negotiate?”

Mr. Davenport scoffed. “I’m not negotiating .”

Marcus shrugged. “Then I guess you’ll have to get Leo to do the gravity belt presentation.”

Mr. Davenport laughed. Marcus said nothing, and the man’s smile fell. “Wait, you’re serious ?”

Marcus gave him his most innocent expression. “Well, I won’t, and neither will Adam, Bree, or Chase…”

Mr. Davenport sighed and put his head in his hands.

Marcus returned to the lab with a triumphant grin. He was immediately bombarded by three eager bionic teens. “How did it go?” They asked. “Do we get a day off? Is the strike finally over?”

“No,” Marcus said with a placid smile. “Leo is doing the gravity belt presentation.”

A moment of silence.

“What!?” They screamed.

Leo shook his head. “See, I told you—wait, I’m doing what?”

Marcus raised his eyebrow at Leo, then turned to the others and explained, “It’s a bluff. Trust me, he’ll fold like wet cardboard.”

“How can you know that?” Bree asked.

Marcus laughed. “Well, the only other option is letting him,” he nodded at Leo, “Make one of the biggest presentations of Mr. Davenport’s career.”

Another moment of silence before they, too, burst into laughter.

It reminded Marcus, oddly, of the night of the robot smackdown. More specifically, how he felt afterward when everyone was cheering and chanting his name.

(Victor was surprisingly forthcoming with praise, but it was always backhanded and demeaning. He saw Marcus as just a robot that could talk, or perhaps some sort of animal with exceptionally neat tricks, and so delighted in his every jab and jest—up to a point.

Dad, however, respected him… up to a point. He seemed to bounce back between treating Marcus like the greatest thing to ever exist and just some errand boy. Achievements were either too insignificant or too expected to mention.

But Mr. Davenport's family—wonderful, beautiful, ignorant—didn't see him like that.)

“What’s so funny?” Leo demanded. The tips of his ears turned bright red: embarrassment.

“Nothing,” Chase said, wiping away tears of laughter. “You’re just… not the best candidate for this sort of thing.”

“Yeah,” Bree agreed. “You don’t have the training that we do.”

Leo’s face morphed. Sadness. Hurt.

Anger.

“I bet I’ll be amazing,” he grumbled. “I bet I’ll do this presentation even better than you guys could.”

That just made them laugh harder.

To give the man credit, Mr. Davenport kept his cool right until the NASA representatives knocked on their door. Then he folded like the aforementioned wet cardboard.

“Alright, alright! I give up, just please put on the belt,” he pleaded.

Chase moved toward Leo, and Marcus smoothly stepped in front of him. “Two days off a week,” Marcus told Mr. Davenport. “Minimum. With options for negotiation pending unforeseen circumstances.”

Mr. Davenport scoffed. “I—”

There was another, more insistent knock on the door.

“Fine! Now take that belt off .”

Marcus nodded and stepped aside. Chase dove forward to get the belt, but after a few seconds of struggling it became clear that something was wrong. The belt must’ve been stuck.

The knocking continued. Marcus pushed Chase aside and attempted to remove the thing himself. The buckle was jammed; frustrated, Marcus tugged at it, momentarily not taking into account his lower battery. Less energy meant less control, less control meant—

The belt snapped.

Marcus stared at the two pieces in his hands in utter horror. “Why would you do that?” Leo screamed.

“I didn’t mean to.” Marcus’ voice was synthesized, a quality that only came out when his battery was very low. Or, apparently, when he was very shocked. It was also quiet, so quiet he’s positive that no one heard it besides Chase.

“Marcus!” Mr. Davenport hissed. He stood above them and waved his hands rapidly. “What— how did you even —”

Marcus flinched.

In the end, they had to schedule the presentation for another day. “I’ve learned my lesson,” Mr. Davenport told them. “From now on, I’ll be less ‘boss’, more ‘dad’.”

“So we get a day off?” Adam asked. “You know what that means!”

“Movie night!” They screeched. They all dispersed toward different parts of the house. Marcus made to leave, but a voice stopped him.

“Wait, Marcus,” Mr. Davenport said. “I want to talk to you.”

Marcus cursed internally. He’d hoped that with enough hysterics, Mr. Davenport would forget the immense amount of strength needed to break the belt clean in half. He had no such luck, apparently.

Or maybe he did. Mr. Davenport thought for a moment before finally asking, “Did Douglas ever..?” He gestured vaguely.

Marcus didn’t budge an inch. “Ever what?”

Ironically, Mr. Davenport flinched first. “Nothing.” He waved Marcus off and turned toward his room. “Enjoy your movie night.”

Marcus sighed and ran his hands through his hair. Maybe he could beg off of movie night and retire early. His battery had only gotten worse since Leo blackmailed him into using his bionics. It used to last him two days at a time; now it was at sixty percent after barely one.

But later that night, he was stopped by another, equally annoying member of the family.

“What are you doing, Leo?”

Leo stepped out of the room he’d been hiding in. “How did you..? Right. Bionic hearing.”

“You breathe very loudly. I don’t need bionics to hear that.”

“Speaking of bionics,” Leo said smoothly. “It was suspiciously nice, what you did today.”

Marcus glared. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And you did it of your own free will, too,” Leo continued. “Which makes it even weirder that you broke the belt.”

“I told you: that was an accident,” Marcus said. “I don’t know my own strength.”

Leo snorted. “That’s a lie. Adam says you need to always be aware; otherwise, you’ll break everything you touch. And you’re pretty strong. Which means…” Leo gasped and his eyes went wide. “Maybe it was an accident. Which means you’re glitching !”

Marcus was beginning to think that Leo Dooley was the worst thing to ever happen to him. “What? No, they're not.”

“They are! Because you— you don’t have a capsule! ”

It’s not fair , he thought. Not fair that things would go so far off-Plan. Not fair he’d be discovered by this human boy barely a day after he arrived.

Two missions, and he’s failed both of them .

“Why don’t you talk a little louder?” He snarked. “I’m not sure Chase heard you.”

“Sorry.” Leo winced, seeming genuinely apologetic. “But you didn’t deny it,” he pointed out.

Marcus sighed. “So what if I—if they are?”

“Hm.” Leo crossed his arms. “Your bionics are glitching and have been for weeks, possibly months. And yet ,” he grinned, “You still used them to try and help the others.”

Marcus didn’t have a heart, but if he did, it would’ve sunk. “What are you getting at?”

“You really care about them, don’t you?”

Marcus sneered. “Don’t be ridiculous.” He pushed past Leo and walked toward the TV room.

Big mistake. Protestation only egged him on. “Admit it.” Leo followed barely a step behind. “Underneath all the murderous urges, you’re just a biiig softie.”

Marcus stopped and Leo ran into his back. The android spun around and shoved a finger into the boy’s chest. “I’ll kill you right now,” he hissed. The hall was bathed in the green glow of his eyes. “Don’t test me.”

Leo, to his astonishment, only smirked. “Don’t flash your eyes unless you intend to use ‘em, Captain Eyebrow.” He wiggled a finger disapprovingly, then his smirk fell and he said more seriously: “You may not like me, but you like them . I can respect that." He pointed at his eyes, then at Marcus. "But I'm still keeping an eye on you."

He walked past him, still pointing.

Marcus shook his head. What a weird kid.

Because he’d rather die than let Leo be right, he attended movie night. After several minutes of arguing in which Marcus had to feign knowledge of several movies he’d never even heard of, they finally decided on Wall-E. Not that it mattered; everyone fell asleep thirty minutes in. Bree and Chase slumped over on Adam's shoulders; Leo sat on the floor but he, too, leaned against Adam's legs.

He found his thoughts drifting toward Leo’s words. Do I care about them? he wondered. It should’ve been a straight-forward question; unfortunately, it was also an emotional one, and Marcus sucked at those.

He only helped them because, well… it was fun, and he had nothing better to do, and it would ruin the Plan if someone died on a mission anyway. Dad would approve; Dad would’ve wanted him to, probably, just to see the look on Mr. Davenport’s face.

But actually caring about them? Out of the question. Completely against the Plan. Forget the Plan; it went against everything Dad believed in. Everything Marcus believed in.

And yet.

He gritted his teeth and looked away from them. There was no point in thinking such things. Just complete the mission , he told himself. Stop feeling and just… complete the mission you were built for.

(What happens to me when this mission is over?)

His phone rang.

Marcus didn’t flinch, though the sound surprised him. After all, only one person would be calling him at this hour, and for only one reason. Sure enough, he answered and heard his creator’s voice:

“Marcus,” he said, “It’s time to come home.”

Chapter Text

"As the call, so the echo." — Russian proverb

I.

Dad threatened his life only once. Only once.

It was a simple thing. He could’ve missed it. They were arguing and Dad sighed and said, "Maybe I should've programmed you to be less argumentative."

He knew (thought? hoped? ) that Dad meant it as a joke. But it was a reminder that really, Marcus Aurelius Davenport—who liked to act, and scheme, and play guitar—didn’t exist at all. He imagined this was the discomfort humans felt when viewing gore; everything you were reduced to a pile of blood and viscera, or in his case, symbols on a screen.

(Dad didn’t even look at him as he said it. Like it was no big deal .)

The memory circled in the back of his head like a shark as he ran home. Dad and reprogramming and death and free will. What happens to me when this mission is over?

Their lair was a repurposed sausage factory. From the front, it looked like a normal suburban house, if a bit out-of-place in the derelict warehouse district. The back door, however, opened onto the factory floor.

When Marcus left, the room was still mostly empty. Now it resembled a proper lair. A faint green glow emanated from behind the cage Marcus assumed to be his capsule. The desk now held all sorts of screens and beside it was a board covered in papers and red yarn. In the center of the room was another cage, this one with glowing blue bars—probably made to block the signals from bionic chips.

The moment Dad spotted him, he swept Marcus up in a hug that would’ve crushed any human. “ God , I missed you.”

Around Dad he usually played at being cool and unaffected, but just this once…

He squeezed back. “Missed you, too,” he said, voice muffled, and found he wasn’t lying.

Dad released him and Marcus took in his appearance, his CPU whirring frantically to compare him to the man of six months ago. His father’s hair was its typical artfully disheveled instead of a true mess, his skin a shade darker, and the ever-present bags under his eyes a few shades lighter. Most telling of all, the full-body tremor had disappeared.

Marcus didn’t realize that he’d been worried, but a part of him relaxed nonetheless.

Dad showed him around the lair, telling him everything he’d missed while he’d been away. Half-way through he got sidetracked by the Plan. “ Tomorrow ,” he said like he could scarcely believe it. “Tomorrow, we capture them. Finally, after fifteen years, I’ll have them back!” He clenched his fists and made a high-pitched noise.

“What are you going to do with them?” Marcus asked. He ran his hands over the bars of his capsule. “Once you have them.”

Dad hummed. “I need to look at their bionics to develop newer chips, but after that?” he paused consideringly. “I’m not sure. I was thinking I’d keep them, have ‘em rob banks and whatnot, or I could stick with the original plan and rent ‘em out. As long as Donnie doesn’t have them anymore, right?”

Marcus nodded, but his heart wasn’t in it. A few months ago, he would’ve been overjoyed at that statement. It was everything he wanted—Adam, Bree, and Chase out of the picture forever, him and Dad alone again. But for some reason, he wasn’t. He didn’t want them around, sure, but maybe he didn’t want them auctioned off to the highest bidder either.

Man , Marcus thought. I totally suck at this whole ‘evil’ thing. Dad would be disappointed .

He’d meant it as a dramaticism, but it stung unexpectedly. Stupid emotions.

“Get some rest, huh?” Dad patted him on the shoulders. Marcus, used to it, didn’t cringe. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow!”

He smiled with genuine happiness. “It’s gonna be so awesome when I pull this off, Dad.” Maybe I can convince him to keep them , he thought. That wouldn’t be completely awful . 

Dad frowned, quick to squash his son’s pride. “When we pull this off,” he corrected.

Marcus rolled his eyes as he stepped into his capsule. Dad always did this—tried to take credit for Marcus’ work, like all of their accomplishments were shared just because Dad created him. “Right,” he drawled. “Just like we forgot my birthday.”

“I apologized for that!” Dad threw his hands in the air. “You’ve gotta learn to let go of the past, man.”

“Oh, sorry,” Marcus said flatly. He let the capsule door shut in Dad’s face. “Are you angry, or are we angry?”

Dad only sighed. “You’re exhausting,” he said, moving to the desk. “Go ahead and power down. I want to do a system check while you’re out. I think something may be off with your battery.”

Marcus closed his eyes. Dad muttered to himself as he tapped at the screen. The noise felt erratic and grating, nothing like the constant hum of his charger. The lair was large and open instead of the dark, enclosed space he’d grown used to.

Funny. After six months, Marcus was finally, finally home… and he was homesick.

His taste processors shut down, then his sight, then his pneumonic actuator and hydraulics system. Dad hummed as he moved, shifting from foot to foot. No, wait—the sound came from his left, but Dad was across the room—

Marcus abruptly stopped his shut-down process.

Someone else was in the lair.

II.

It was Leo, of course. Marcus wasn’t sure what else he’d expected.

Dad peered down at him with a frown and furrowed brow. Confusion. “Who’s this?”

“Mr. Davenport’s step-son,” Marcus answered. “Leo Dooley. No bionics.” The boy in question tried to say something. Marcus tightened his grip around his chest until he wheezed.

Dad sighed and waved a hand. “Get rid of him.”

Marcus gave him a questioning look. “You mean..?” He mimicked wrapping a string around someone’s throat and pulling it tight. Dad nodded and turned away, muttering angrily.

Marcus knew that most humans valued life, especially the lives of children. He also knew that Dad was evil, and if something could be even loosely described as the ‘right thing’, he was sure to do the opposite. He prided himself on that and he’d built Marcus to do the same, but—

But.

If he killed Leo, the others would never forgive him.

And it wasn’t about forgiveness, not really. It was about the fact that Dad didn’t even look at Marcus as he ordered him to kill a child; that he expected Marcus to do it quickly and without complaint; that he didn’t even consider Marcus having morals or a mind of his own. Like he was a tool. Like he was a weapon .

("Maybe I should've programmed you to be less argumentative.")

And it was about the fact that the Davenport-Dooleys had never, not once, treated him like that.

Marcus realized, with a feeling much like being hit by a train, that he wanted— needed —them to keep treating him as something human. As their friend. As their brother.

Damn it all: Leo was right .

Marcus was the most advanced AI in the world. He considered his options, and he did it quickly: he couldn’t kill Leo, and he couldn’t let him go or the Plan would be ruined. Marcus highly doubted he could convince Dad to keep him, even temporarily, and anyways a missing Leo was sure to raise a fuss.

That left only one option.

Marcus used his EMP blast to knock the robot to the ground. “Leo!” He bellowed. “ Run! ”

Leo, predictably, didn’t run so much as stumble backward a few yards. Not fast enough. Dad turned around, took in the scene, and screamed, “Marcus! What the hell are you doing?”

Marcus looked at him—his wide eyes, his shocked expression—and nearly cackled. I’m betraying my own creator! he thought, a little hysterically. That’s totally evil , right? You should be proud .

Later he’d explain and the Plan would be fine. For the Plan, Dad would forgive anything. Anything . (He hoped.) But for now, Dad and Leo were staring at him, and the robot was getting to its feet, so he straightened and bellowed, “I’m betraying you!”

Dad didn’t seem angry at all. He only blinked rapidly, then laughed, looking sideways at Leo like ‘you seeing this? ’. Marcus was honestly a little hurt, so he shot a lazer at his feet.

“God,” Dad muttered, hopping on one foot. “ Teenagers .” He pressed a button and the robot shot forward.

Marcus dived behind the desk. The robot rammed into it with a CLANG! that reverberated through his metal skeleton and rattled his teeth. Marcus activated his heat vision, waiting for the tell-tale green glow, but instead a message flashed across his vision.

WARNING: LOW BATTERY
> POWER-SAVING MODE ACTIVATED

“No, no, no!” He screamed, but to no avail—the battery was already near-dead when he arrived. Marcus watched helplessly as his bionics shut down one-by-one to save power.

The robot reached down, and for lack of a better option, Marcus ran.

His AI raced to come up with solutions. Marcus was faster, smarter, strong enough to rip the robot apart if it got close. But then again, it could do the same, and without bionics there wasn’t much he could do to stop it.

“What are you doing? ” Leo screeched from behind Marcus’ capsule. Leo, who was still here, even though Marcus betrayed his own father just to give him a chance to escape. Marcus would’ve gaped if he weren’t busy running for his life. “Use your bionics! Shoot it with your lazers! ”

“Gee, thanks for the advice! I totally didn’t think to use my main weapon !” He shouted back. “My bionics aren’t working—” He paused to dash beneath the robot’s outstretched hand. “—at the moment! Any other ideas?”

Leo fell silent, and when Marcus next passed the capsule, a hand shot out and yanked him down. Leo spoke right over Marcus’ hydraulic hiss . “I have a plan.”

“I’m thrilled,” he snarked. “Let’s hear it.”

“Your dad is holding a remote.” Leo pointed and Marcus cursed himself for not thinking of it sooner. “I think he’s using it to control the robot. Can you—”

Marcus was already gone. He sprinted across the expanse, easily dodged the robot’s clumsy swipes, and snatched the remote from Dad’s hands. Well, he tried to. Dad saw him coming and spun out of the way.

They faced each other in silence, Dad with his arms up in a defensive position, Marcus in a half-crouch. He’d wanted to grab the remote before Dad realized what was happening, but now that he couldn’t—now that it seemed there would be an actual fight —he hesitated.

Marcus was stronger than most humans. He was hyper-aware of his strength, but even so, humans were squishy, fragile creatures. The line between a tight grip and a bruising one was thin at best and seemed to vary from person to person. Marcus was always gentle with Dad when they sparred (ever since The Incident ).

Dad knew this and didn’t hesitate to take advantage. “You’re not seriously going to hurt your own creator, are you?”

Behind Marcus’ back, he heard a distinctive click .

If he were human, the blow would have killed him. As it was, it sent him flying across the room. His metal casing, which Dad often bragged could easily withstand bullets, dented under the sheer force.

Marcus hit the wall and slid to the floor as pieces of it rained down around him. For a too-long moment he just laid there, stunned. Internal damage , he thought vaguely, not exactly firing on all cylinders.

Someone was screaming. It was a rather familiar scream, more of a high-pitched shriek, and beneath it were deeper but equally familiar yells. Marcus lifted his head and saw the robot standing in the center of the lair. It didn’t so much as glance at him. No, it was looking at Dad, who was wrestling with—someone—

Leo . The squishy, fragile human had wrapped himself around Dad like a snake. The robot fretted about indecisively, unsure how to extricate the teen without hurting its creator.

A million thoughts raced through Marcus’ mind in the span of a second. Even as old and out-of-practice as Dad was, he found it extremely unlikely that Leo would manage to seriously harm him. The eight-foot robot, however, was currently a threat to all of them, and that was all the motivation that Marcus needed to move.

Its back was turned. That gave him enough time for one clean hit; he had to make it count . Luckily, he’d helped Dad build this robot, and androids had perfect memory. He knew all its weak points.

Marcus’ hand went straight through its back and into its CPU.

It was a small target, but he was precise. He grabbed it, ripped it out, threw it as far as he could, and flipped off before it hit the ground. The robot fell with a thump that shook the floor, wiggling and crackling and leaking a bit of oil.

In any other situation, Marcus would’ve cackled, maybe even gloated a bit. In this situation, though, Leo yelped and Marcus’ head snapped up just in time to see the door slam shut behind Dad.

Marcus stepped forward, intending to follow him, but Leo flopped to the ground and he froze. Somehow, in all his calculations, he’d never considered the possibility that Dad would seriously harm Leo . How stupid. Now he faced the consequences of his actions—Leo could’ve left, should’ve left, but instead he’d stayed and helped Marcus. If he died now, Marcus may as well have killed him, and that would make all of this meaningless.

He knelt by Leo’s side. I’ll just have to deal with Dad later .

“What hurts?” Marcus couldn’t scan for damage without the use of his bionics, but he practically had a PhD in medicine and human biology in general.

Leo’s hands flew to his chest and he gasped instead of answering. Marcus jolted as the worst-case scenarios flew through his mind— broken ribs, collapsed lungs —but Leo’s chest was unbruised. In fact, he didn’t seem to be damaged at all.

Marcus shoved him, probably more harshly than he should’ve. “You’re fine, you wimp,” he snapped. “You just got the wind knocked out of you. Geez, I thought you were dying .”

“So—did— I ,” Leo croaked, but he sat up and began to breathe more normally.

Marcus opened his mouth to deliver a witty retort, but what came out instead was a synthesized whine as his vision dissolved into a pixelated mess of color. He pushed his hands out and they collided with Leo. “I need,” he slumped forward, unable to support his own weight, “ Capsule .”

“Oh,” Leo wheezed. “Right.” He tossed Marcus’ arm over his shoulder and helped him to his feet. “You better not pass out on me,” he warned. “We both know I’m not strong enough to carry you.”

Somehow, they made it to Marcus’ capsule, and he powered off to the sound of Leo’s rambling.

III.

Marcus woke to voices.

The enraged voice sounded so similar to Dad’s that he almost opened his eyes. Then a second, much squeakier voice spoke, and Marcus realized his predicament. He kept his eyes shut and listened.

“You said that Marcus called him dad? ” Mr. Davenport asked. “But that would mean—”

“Yeah, Marcus’ dad is alive, and he’s totally evil,” Leo said. “Like, ‘tried to kill us both’ levels of evil.”

Marcus quietly activated his internal sensors. They told him that the damage to his body was minimal, though he wouldn’t know the full extent until he could get a closer look. Dad usually did the repairs, but Marcus could manage ( had to, for the time being).

Mr. Davenport was still talking. “And did it look like Marcus was working with him?”

“It sure seemed like it to me,” Leo confirmed. “But they didn’t seem to like each other very much. I mean, when Douglas told him to kill me—”

Marcus heard Mr. Davenport inhale sharply.

“—he refused. And then they fought pretty viciously.” A pause. “That robot over there kicked him clear across the room.”

“If they’re working together…” Mr. Davenport hesitated. “It may not be safe to keep him here.”

Marcus chose this moment to rise.

He gasped dramatically and opened his eyes. Almost the moment that he shakily opened the door, Mr. Davenport began the interrogation.

His first question: “Did you know he was alive?”

He shook his head vigorously. When in doubt: deny, deny, deny . His father’s advice; Marcus had always found it useful. “No, I had no idea. He called me in the middle of the night and told me to come here.”

Mr. Davenport’s eyes flickered to the capsule, then to Leo, and he sighed. “We’ll talk more at home.” He pointed at Marcus in promise. “Right now, I need to make a call. Several calls.”

The moment Mr. Davenport stepped away, Leo spun to face him. “Okay,” he said in a low voice. “Now tell me what really happened.”

Marcus gave him his most confused look. “I already told you.”

“ Riiight ,” Leo drawled. “The lying liar who lies is totally telling the truth this time.”

“I wasn’t lying!” Marcus lied.

Leo only stared.

Marcus glanced at Mr. Davenport, who was standing several yards away and was absorbed in conversation, then leaned in and hissed, “If you tell him—”

“You’ll kill me, yes, I know.” Leo rolled his eyes. “We’ve been through this before.”

Marcus sighed and lowered his voice further. “So you know how my dad and your dad had a falling out right before he faked his death?”

Leo nodded.

“Why do you think that was?”

Leo connected the dots fairly quickly, which shouldn’t have surprised him. After all, he was the only one to suspect Marcus, the first to discover his bionics, and one of only four people in the world who knew that Douglas Davenport was alive. He clearly had a knack for figuring things out.

“Bionics!” He shouted. Marcus shushed him and they both looked over at Mr. Davenport, who didn’t spare them a glance. Much more quietly, Leo muttered, “Man, I knew the timeline was weird.”

“Originally, bionics were meant to go in robots,” Marcus explained, “But Dad wanted to adapt them for human use.”

Again, Leo connected the dots, and his eyes went comically wide. “Your dad made Adam, Bree, and Chase?”

“He didn’t just make them. He’s their father—well, technically mother—and he wants them back. That’s why he bui— had me.” Marcus winced internally at the slip-up. It was one thing to admit that his evil dad was alive and the last six months had been a ploy to kidnap the others. It was another to admit that he wasn’t even human.

Leo nodded. “That explains a lot,” he said simply. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Except for one thing: why did you betray him?”

“I had a change of heart,” he deadpanned.

Leo’s face scrunched in confusion. “You have a heart?”

Marcus almost laughed; instead, he rolled his eyes. “ Yes ,” he said in exasperation. “Is it so hard to believe that I didn’t want him to kill you?”

“Three months ago you tried to kill me!”

And I might try again , he thought, but a pang of almost-guilt rolled through him. “I’ve grown since then,” he said with false sincerity. When Leo still looked doubtful, he added in an irritated tone: “Look, not everyone’s as unlikeable as you. You can at least believe I care about the others, right?”

Leo tilted his head, then smiled. “So I was right, Mr. ‘I’ll-Kill-You-Right-Now’.” He used air quotes, then pitched his voice down and said: “‘ Oh, I could never care about anything, my heart is cold and dark and pitiless’ —”

Marcus made the universal ‘ I-want-to-strangle-you’ gesture. “Shut up!”

Leo laughed, then his face dropped into something more serious. “You know you have to tell them, right?”

Marcus sighed. “Yeah, I know. Just… give me some time?”

“Some time .”

“A week,” he amended. “Give me a week to come clean. But until then, just… don’t tell him I was spying for him. He might get rid of me, and then…” He trailed off and let Leo’s imagination fill in the blanks.

Leo looked conflicted for a moment, but finally he nodded. “Fine. One week. And only because you didn’t let him get to the others. But wha—what are you doing? ”

“Destroying evidence,” Marcus said smoothly, and fired his heat vision at his own phone. He flung the melted, ruined device away just as Mr. Davenport turned toward them. He gave Marcus a frowning, puzzled look for a moment and his nose twitched as if sniffing the air, but if he sensed anything he just shook it off.

“We’re going home,” he pointed at Leo, “Where you will stay , because you are so grounded!”

“ What? That’s not fair!”

Marcus tilted his head, struggling to hear over their arguing. “Um,” he said. “I think someone’s—”

Adam, Bree, and Chase all but broke down the door.

Adam reached them first. He scooped Leo up and lifted him three feet off the ground (nearly Leo’s own height). “We thought you died ,” he sobbed. Leo, who was having his lungs compressed for the second time that day, only wheezed.

Mr. Davenport frowned at them. “I told you to stay home .”

Bree rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, you also told us to stay in the basement.”

Marcus watched with trepidation. He realized the depth of the hole he’d dug; from here, things could only get worse. So much worse.

“Are you okay, Marcus?” Chase asked with a furrowed brow.

Marcus tore his eyes away from Leo and Adam. His resting face—not his natural one, but the one he’d crafted—tended to fall somewhere between concern and innocence. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, too distracted to come up with a decent lie.

Chase’s frown deepened.

“I’m fine , Adam,” Leo snapped, shoving Adam away with one hand. “Marcus’ psycho dad showed up, but other than that—”

“ What? ” Adam dropped Leo flat on the ground.

“Yeah, about that…” Mr. Davenport took a deep breath. “Douglas is alive.”

Three heads whipped around to stare at Marcus.

“Don’t look at me,” he squeaked, putting on his most innocent expression. “I’m as surprised as you are!” Leo scoffed, and Marcus subtly used his molecular kinesis to yank his shoe and make him stumble. No one spared the boy a glance.

“That’s not the worst part,” Mr. Davenport continued. Three heads whipped back around. “He’s alive,” he paused for dramatic effect, “And he’s looking for you guys.”

Bree caught on as quickly as Leo. “Why would your brother be looking for us?”

Mr. Davenport laughed nervously. “ Well… ”

When he explained, Chase glared and Bree yelled, but Adam only tilted his head. “Oh,” he said. “So that’s why Marcus is bionic.”

The yelling cut off abruptly. For the first time in his life, Marcus was so shocked that he forgot to lie. Being found out by Donald, Chase, Bree, or even Leo was one thing. But Adam? He never would’ve expected Adam. This was a new low.

“You’re bionic?” Bree asked.

Chase added, “And you knew? ”

“No,” Adam said with an expression Marcus recognized as smug, “But I do now.” He tilted his head again. “And it was kind of obvious, looking back on it.”

Everyone stared, first at Adam and then, unfortunately, at Marcus. “Why didn’t you tell us?” Chase asked.

This was it. He had to sell this, more than any lie he’d ever told or act he’d ever put on. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to, but—” He stopped and glanced fake-furtively at Mr. Davenport. “My dad… he t-told me things about Mr. Davenport, and after I saw how he treated you…” Now he did look at Mr. Davenport, who winced and avoided eye contact. “I was afraid,” he admitted.

Leo rolled his eyes.

But Marcus realized it was almost true. Standing there, watching Chase on the verge of tears and Bree more crestfallen than he’d ever seen and Adam , of all people, glaring at him—this was the reaction he’d expected, the one he’d wanted to avoid, and now it was happening and there was nothing he could do to stop it. An emotion settled in his chest, heavier than fear and darker than regret.

“So you didn’t know he was alive?” Chase asked. “This whole time?”

Marcus shook his head vigorously. “I swear!”

“But you knew you were bionic,” Adam pointed out.

“And that Douglas was our real dad,” Bree added. “So everyone was lying to us.”

“‘Everyone’?” Leo mimicked. “I’ve been trying to tell you since the beginning!”

Mr. Davenport winced at the viciousness in Bree’s tone. “Douglas built you guys to be soldiers,” he started. “I didn’t take you—well, I did, but—”

“Why wouldn’t you tell us?” Chase asked. “Why lie to us? Did you think we couldn’t handle the truth?”

“I…” Mr. Davenport hesitated. “Douglas and I were partners.”

Marcus realized he was going to hear something he’d never heard before: the other side of the story.

“We built Davenport Industries together,” he continued. “Bionics were our biggest project. Originally, we made them for robots, so they could do the jobs that humans couldn’t, but Douglas wanted to see if they could be adapted for human use.”

He swallowed and finally looked them in the eye. “They could, but the side effects were deadly. The toll on the body was too severe, the tech didn’t mesh with the immune system right—”

“The glitches,” Chase said.

Mr. Davenport nodded. “Right. That’s why you glitch. I wanted to shut the project down, and I thought he agreed, but then I found out he went behind my back and implanted them in humans.” He shook his head and said, almost to himself, “I should’ve figured it out when he took a sudden interest in genetic engineering.”

This wasn’t the way Dad told the story. He always said that his brother met him pound for pound, experiment for experiment, right up until he betrayed him. That his concerns weren’t born out of ethics, but out of jealousy that Dad figured it out before he did.

Humans were liars, every one of them. Marcus knew that. They lied so much they could do it without even noticing. Dad was one of the worst of them, and he was quite similar to his brother, even if neither of them wanted to admit it.

“Genetic engineering,” Chase mused. “A very grey area, ethically speaking. But that’s not it?”

“No,” Mr. Davenport said. “His plan was to… rent you out, essentially. To the highest bidder.”

Silence. Adam moved closer to his siblings.

“So I took you, and I ran,” he continued, gesturing wildly. “I sent people to arrest Douglas, but there was a car chase, and he drove off a bridge. They never found a body, but judging from the height… it was safe to assume he was dead.” Then he looked at Marcus. “Except, apparently, he wasn’t. And somehow, he managed to take another experiment with him."

“So what do we do now?” Chase wondered.

“We go home,” Mr. Davenport said. “And we plan.”

Chapter Text

Marcus remembered everything. Everything .

The first time he felt guilt, he was six months old.

For a creation like Marcus, guilt was useless. He was a machine , after all, one made to harm and deceive humans. Marcus valued the Plan above all else, so he made an effort to purge himself of the emotion.

But the first time he felt it, he was completely unprepared.

When Marcus was six months old, Dad broke his arm. Or rather, Marcus broke Dad’s arm. A simple transverse fracture of the humerus, right above his elbow. It was an accident, of course—they were sparring and Marcus miscalculated Dad’s speed and the force of his own kick—but still: broken arm. A broken arm meant an arm that had to be reset, and since hospitals were out of the question, Dad bit down on a belt while Victor snapped it back into place.

“I’m sorry,” Marcus had repeated, over and over and over. There wasn’t much else he could do.

“It’s fine, buddy,” Dad said, and ruffled Marcus’ hair. “I’ve had worse. Just don’t let it happen again, huh?”

(When Marcus was little more than a year old, he broke his arm.

Literally broke it. Right in half.

Dad scowled and said, “I warned you not to play up there! That’s expensive equipment you’re damaging. Money doesn’t just grow on trees, y’know.”)

When they got home, Tasha scooped him into her arms and squeezed him so tightly he felt something creak.

“I’m fine, Mrs. Davenport,” he said, voice muffled into her shoulder. “No one is hurt.”

Then there was more yelling and explaining and grounding, but eventually, Tasha released them. Marcus started sneaking off to his room to recharge, but Mr. Davenport’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. “Marcus,” he said. “Come with me. We need to talk.”

They rode the elevator to the basement in silence. Mr. Davenport, generally speaking, was never silent, so the whole affair made him extremely nervous. He prepared to burst into tears the moment the doors opened, but instead Mr. Davenport started squealing as he all-but-skipped to the cyberdesk.

“We have to take a look at your chip,” he said, swiping every which way. “I have no idea what Douglas might’ve programmed into it. What abilities do you have? Do you know how they work? I— Chase! ” Mr. Davenport waved his youngest son over. “Come here! We have bionics to study!”

“No thanks,” Chase said, glaring, and walked away.

They watched him board the elevator in silence, then Mr. Davenport voiced both their thoughts. “What was that?” He asked. “Chase would never turn down the chance to study a discovery like this.”

“I think,” Marcus said slowly, “He might be mad at us.”

Mr. Davenport scoffed and his hands returned to the cyberdesk. “Why would he be mad?”

An odd swell of anger rose within him. It was the same kind of flippant, thoughtless question that Dad might’ve asked shortly after saying that Marcus was ‘just an android, anyway, so his opinion didn’t count for much’. “I don’t know,” he said, injecting so much confusion into his mannerisms that it bordered on sarcasm. “Maybe because we lied to him?”

But Mr. Davenport wasn’t listening. He rifled through a desk drawer and pulled out a device. “Okay, let’s scan it and—”

“I don’t have a chip,” he blurted.

Mr. Davenport squinted at him. “What?”

“I don’t have a chip,” he repeated. “My bionics are spread all throughout my body.”

“They must have some sort of centralized control,” he argued.

“In my chest,” Marcus interrupted, tapping at his sternum (or where it would be if he had one). “Behind my heart. It can only be accessed through surgical means.” Please don’t ask for an X-ray .

Mr. Davenport deflated. “Oh.” Then he straightened and shouted: “ Oh! Marcus, your chip! Leo said that robot kicked you across the room. We have to make sure—”

“I’m fine,” Marcus snapped, more harshly than he’d intended. “I already looked. There’s no bruising, and no ribs are broken.” ‘Less is more’ was the number one rule of lying, but he couldn’t help but add, “My bionics make me pretty durable. I hardly even felt it.”

Mr. Davenport frowned as his brain worked to digest the information. Marcus wondered what it would be like to think so slowly, then quickly dismissed the thought. Too disturbing. “My capsule had about the same design as Adam, Bree, and Chase’s,” he offered. “I could help you draw up the schematics?”

The other man frowned, but agreed, and they began to work. “How did you make it this far without a capsule, anyway?”

“I didn’t use my bionics,” Marcus lied with a shrug.

“At all?” Mr. Davenport asked, vaguely horrified. “For six months?”

“Yeah? Maybe once or twice, but it’s not like I needed them for anything.” 

Mr. Davenport blinked at him, shook his head as if to dislodge the thought, and asked about Marcus’ bionics. When he told him—not the full extent, obviously, but enough that he didn’t grow suspicious—he asked, “So they’re basically a combination of Adam, Bree, and Chase’s abilities?”

Not quite , Marcus thought, but still he nodded. Mr. Davenport hmm ’d and tapped at something on his screen. It looked like a list. “I wonder if…” He trailed off.

“If what?” Marcus pushed, but the man only shook his head again. Eventually Marcus grew bored, so he faked yawns until Mr. Davenport got the hint and waved him off to go take a nap.

But Marcus didn’t go to his room.

He wasn’t entirely certain of what he was doing until he stepped into the living room where the others were gathered. Their conversation grinded to a complete halt the moment they caught sight of him.

They waited for him to say something, and Marcus waited for them to say something, and eventually the silence grew so awkward that he had to break it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, then winced at his own bluntness.

“‘Sorry’,” Chase repeated. “You’re sorry that you lied to us, all of us, for six months?” Marcus opened his mouth and Chase steamrolled right over him. “That you didn’t tell us Douglas was our father or that you were bionic?”

“...Yes?”

Chase rolled his eyes and shoved past him wordlessly. Adam and Bree followed, Adam glaring and Bree avoiding eye contact entirely, until only Leo was left. The other boy crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “Don’t expect me to feel sorry for you,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“I still think you’re a slimy snake.”

“I know .”

Leo began to leave, but Marcus must’ve looked especially pathetic, because at the last second he sighed and turned back. “Look, I’m sure they’ll come around,” he said, voice lowered to a near-whisper. “You just need to give ‘em some time.”

Marcus opened his mouth to deliver some scathing retort, and to his horror, instead asked, “What makes you so sure?”

“You’re their brother. They kinda have to forgive you.” Leo began to leave and paused once again. “But a word of advice? The longer you lie, the worse it’ll be when you finally tell the truth.”

Marcus scoffed. ‘ The truth ’. What did Leo know about the truth? Marcus hadn’t stopped lying since he found out what lying was —so about immediately after his creation. He didn’t intend to stop now. Besides, as far as he could tell, the truth would only make this situation exponentially worse.

Speaking of which.

WARNING: LOW BATTERY


Marcus did a quick calculation. He’d charged for about an hour. That should’ve brought his battery up to at least seventy percent, but when he’d awoken it was barely half that.

It’s not the charger , he thought. Dad was right. Something’s wrong with my battery .

Marcus tended to avoid the particulars of his own configuration, and anyways, it was kind of difficult to know the complete workup of one’s self. There was one person in the world who knew how he operated…

And Marcus had just betrayed him.

Even if he hadn’t, if he could somehow talk his way out of the grave he’d dug for himself, he had no phone to do it with. Chase, who might have been able to help, wanted nothing to do with him, and the thought of revealing his secret to Mr. Davenport was unbearable.

It figured. The first time he ever tried to be ‘good’, he ended up betraying everyone that trusted him.

Marcus realized that for the first time since he’d arrived at the Davenport-Dooley household—quite possibly for the first time in his entire life—he was well and truly alone. A feeling settled low in his gut, just unfamiliar enough that he didn’t recognize it for several long seconds.

After all, he hadn’t felt it since he was six months old. 

I.

“Theoretically speaking,” he said. “If I wanted someone to forgive me. How would I do that?”

Janelle froze with a sewing needle in hand. The play was in only three weeks, so everyone was frantic to make the final preparations. Janelle helped Jenny with the costumes; Marcus helped Owen with the decorations.

“Depends,” Jenny said. “What are they forgiving you for?”

“Lying,” Marcus said simply.

Janelle ‘ hmmm ’d’. “Well, generally speaking, actions speak louder than words.”

“So I should bribe them?”

“Um. I don’t think—”

But Marcus was no longer listening. “Yeah,” he muttered to himself. “That could work.” All three of the bionic siblings were hopelessly materialistic. Bree thought of shopping as a fun activity, which sort of baffled him; Adam collected pocket lint, which baffled him even further; and Chase was a known hoarder of techno-junk.

He’d studied psychology. He knew that human brains could do things without their owner’s permission, often without their knowledge. If he could endear himself to them this way, worm his way back into their affections—

Yeah. It could work.

“Oh, forgiveness,” Owen mused. “That double-edged sword of selfishness and sacrifice.”

Marcus nodded. That sounded about right.

II.

He started with Adam, but Bree was the first to forgive him.

He chose Adam because his obsessions were simple. The oldest sibling was also the kindest, usually quick to forgive, and, well… Marcus assumed that he’d be the easiest to trick. But he’d forgotten that Adam was also easily frightened and, apparently, extremely paranoid.

Adam cowered away from him every time he approached, and glared daggers at him when he dared to approach the others. Once, he glared so hard that it set off his heat vision, and Marcus narrowly escaped losing an ear. He still wasn’t convinced it was as accidental as Adam claimed.

Experiment #1: failed. On to the next one.

He’d intended to approach Bree at school, due to the aforementioned 24/7 Adam-guard. But then he got caught up in the thrill of stalking (he hadn’t used his tracking devices in months!) and one thing led to another. He watched her tell the others that she was going shopping, then she zoomed off—yet the tracker showed her circling around to another school entrance.

Huh , he thought. Interesting . So he did what any sane person would do, and followed her.

They arrived at the classroom, a familiar classroom, at the same time.

Marcus smiled brightly. “Hey, Bree! Where are you going?”

“Oh, uh.” She shuffled from foot to foot. A nervous gesture—a tell , some would say. His smile widened. “Just getting something I left behind in a classroom?”

“What did you leave behind?” He asked curiously.

“Um—just—”

The door swung open. “Bree! Are you coming in, or are you just gonna stand there?”

“Jenny?” Marcus said, faking surprise.

Jenny blinked at him before her face broke into a wide grin. “Marcus? Are you finally joining fashion club?”

“Uh,” he glanced at Bree, who motioned ‘stop’ frantically, “Yeah! Bree talked me into it.”

Bree lowered her face into her hands.

“So how do you know Bree?” Jenny asked as she led them into the room.

“She didn’t tell you?” He gave her a curious look. “I’m her adopted brother.”

“Oh,” Jenny looked at Bree, “I didn’t know that!”

Bree laughed nervously. “It’s a recent thing.”

“Recent?” Marcus said doubtfully. “It’s been six months!”

Bree’s eye twitched. “Well, y’know—”

Because he was supposed to be apologizing, Marcus decided to spare her. “The Davenports didn’t want to announce it,” he explained to Jenny, “Y’know, because of the publicity.”

Jenny nodded in understanding. “Right. Well, in any case, I’m glad Bree could get you to join! We’re in desperate need of new members.”

Jenny introduced him to the other club members, and Marcus had no choice but to sit through thirty minutes of serious discussion about the latest innovations of the textile world. At the end of those thirty minutes, he followed Bree into the hall as they all made their goodbyes.

“So,” he started.

Bree rounded on him with a terrifying ferocity. Though Marcus knew he could easily beat her in a fight—he was faster, stronger, and not limited by human stamina—he still took a step back. “This is mine ,” she hissed. “Mine and no one else’s. If you stick your nose in here again, I will cut it off .”

He held up his hands in surrender. “Woah, woah. I’m not sticking my nose anywhere. I just wanted to talk.”

Bree rolled her eyes and started walking away. Marcus followed. “How do you know Jenny, anyway?” She asked.

“I know lots of people,” he said cryptically. “Jenny handles the costumes for drama club. Her and Janelle are friends, I think. But that’s besides the point. I—” He sped to keep up with Bree’s fast pace. “I do want to make things right. I know I can’t expect you to forgive me right away, but actions speak louder than words, so… let me make it up to you?”

Bree glared at him. “You really think you can ‘make up’ for what you did?”

“I can try, can’t I?” Marcus asked, and decided to go all-in. No guts, no glory , or something like that. “I’m really, really sorry, okay? I just want to make it up to you. You’re kind of my only friends, and… and…” He took a deep breath, ready to release a heart-wrenching sob.

Bree’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “Okay, okay,” she relented. “You can go shopping with me. But ,” she held up a finger, “You’re carrying all my bags.”

He nodded and smiled. “Alright!”

Mission Creek was a relatively small town, but a much larger city was nearby—’nearby’ as defined by speedsters. That’s where they went. “All the high-end stuff is here,” Bree explained when he asked why Mission Creek Mall wasn’t suitable.

She raced him there. Marcus lagged behind; partly to conserve battery life, partly because if he went any faster he’d careen out of control. Besides , generally speaking, people weren’t put in a kind and forgiving mood by getting their nose ground into the dirt.

‘Shopping’, as Bree defined it, involved a lot less shopping than he’d imagined. Mostly, it involved eating, because apparently speedsters ate quite a bit. “Davenport used to feed us these pellets,” Bree said almost wistfully. “They tasted awful, but they were so filling. I feel like I eat twice as much now, but I’m never really full.”

Marcus nodded sympathetically. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

He ignored her. “Why do you keep this a secret?”

Bree sighed heavily and threw her hands in the air, almost flinging her forkful of cake away in the process. “I spent sixteen years,” she spat. “Sixteen! Years! In one room with Adam and Chase. One room. Is it too much to ask for a little privacy? A little independence ?” She shook her head. “Not everything has to be their business.”

Marcus blinked, unsure how to handle the outburst. Luckily, Bree didn’t seem to be waiting for his input. “Leo is the only one who knows,” she continued. “And I swore him to secrecy, just like I’m swearing you to secrecy.”

He held up a hand in solemn oath. “I’m sworn.”

Bree laughed. “Good.”

Marcus lowered his hand. “Thanks again for letting me come along,” he said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say.

Bree’s mouth twitched. “I mean, if you’re just gonna wallow in guilt, I might as well take advantage, right?”

He blinked.

Bree burst into laughter.

Marcus blushed furiously. “You’re not angry!” He shouted in an accusatory tone. The woman at the next table gave him a weird look.

“I was,” Bree shrugged, shoveled food into her mouth, and then didn’t swallow before continuing, “But not really at you , not anymore.”

“Why not?”

This time, she actually took the time to swallow. “I guess because I kind of understand why you did it,” she said at last. “If I had the chance to live as a normal person, with no bionics or anything—I’d take it. I’d take it in a heartbeat .”

Marcus tilted his head. Would he want to live as a normal human, with no bionics or AI or even weird tech? He shuddered. Definitely not. He wouldn’t even be the same person. But when he thought about the families on TV, who were warm and fuzzy even when they were rambunctious, he could see where Bree was coming from.

And if it helped his case, well.

“Besides,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “You thought Douglas was dead, too. So I can’t blame you too much.”

“So did Mr. Davenport,” he pointed out. And you’re still mad at him , went unspoken.

Bree scowled and stabbed her food viciously. “That’s different,” she snapped. “Are you gonna finish eating or what?”

Experiment #2: successful. On to the next one.

Where Adam was hesitant to talk but happy to glare, Chase was an awful mixture of both. Every action Marcus took was harshly and immediately criticized.

“Nice going, Marcus .”

“Great job, Marcus .”

“I guess you’d know a lot about lying, huh?”

That last jab wasn’t targeted at him specifically, but also at Mr. Davenport, who’d only winced. So it went for a few days: Chase berating him at every opportunity, Leo awkwardly silent and Adam silently agreeing. It got to such a point that Bree deigned to step in.

“I get that he lied to us and all, but you’re being kind of harsh.”

“Am I?” Chase snapped. “Am I being ‘ kind of harsh ’ to the guy that betrayed us?”

“‘Betray’ is a little dramatic,” Bree said. “Sure, he lied, but it’s not like he knew that Douglas was alive.”

“Who cares! He knew he was bionic—he knew that Douglas was our father, that Mr. Davenport was lying —”

And so it went.

The one-week deadline drew nearer and Marcus grew nervous. He had a Plan, a Plan which involved garnering forgiveness before next Sunday. Eventually, he cornered Chase in the kitchen, determined to either settle this or…

Or.

This resulted in a very aggressive midnight snack.

Chase slammed the cereal box onto the counter. “Why didn’t you tell us?” He demanded. “Did you just not trust us or, or…” He trailed off.

Marcus tilted his head back and thought hard about what the person he pretended to be would say. “It’s not that I didn’t trust you,” he said carefully. “I was just… scared, I guess.”

“Of what? ”

“Of you.” Chase flinched as if the words had physically impacted him, but he stayed silent, so Marcus continued, “As you can probably guess, Douglas wasn’t… the best father.” The words weren’t false, but they weren’t really true, either. “He made me to be a weapon. Not exactly the best father-son relationship, y’know? I guess I just didn’t want to go back to that.”

Chase’s brow furrowed. “Mr. Davenport doesn’t see us as weapons .”

“I know,” he said. “He really loves you guys.” He made sure to lace his tone with envy. It seemed to work, if the way Chase’s brow unfurrowed was any indication. “I understand why you wouldn’t forgive me straight away,” Marcus said in what he hoped was an apologetic tone. “Or at all.”

“You’re kind of my first friend,” Chase admitted. “Only friend. Whatever. So when it turned out you were lying, I thought maybe…”

Marcus saw where he was going. “I wasn’t. Not about that,” he promised. Honesty flatters humans , he remembered. “You’re my first-only friend, too.”

Chase didn’t seem to believe that. “Really?”

Marcus nodded. “Yeah! It’s not like I could go to school, y’know? It was just me and Dad.”

“Huh,” Chase said. Marcus saw his grip on the cereal box loosen, and resisted the urge to pump his fist in victory. “Hey, do you have superintelligence?”

Marcus grinned. “Yeah. And super speed, and super strength, and pretty much every bionic you three have.” But better , he added silently.

“That’s awesome ,” Chase blurted, then seemed embarrassed at his own enthusiasm. “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Davenport is really smart, and Leo is pretty smart, too, but—”

“It’s not the same?”

Chase nodded emphatically. “Man, why would you ever hide this? We could’ve been talking about—” He froze mid-sentence. Then he started laughing an obnoxious sort of laugh, one that rose and rose in pitch until it was nearly a cackle.

“What’s so funny?” Marcus asked, a bit creeped out by the display. Humans were so odd .

“Mr. Davenport always told us that our mom was dead,” Chase wheezed. “I guess he wasn’t lying.”

It took a second to click, but when it did, Marcus started laughing too.

Experiment #3: successful. Now to circle back to the first one.

Unlike Chase and Bree, he didn’t have to corner Adam to force him to talk. The oldest bionic sibling came to Marcus when he was in the middle of negotiating what movie to watch with the others, and said apropos of nothing, “My family is important to me.”

Marcus shifted awkwardly.

“We swore we’d never put them in danger.” He looked at the other three. “And you want me to just… trust him?”

“You don’t have to trust him,” Chase said. (“You probably shouldn’t,” Leo muttered.) “You just have to give him a chance.”

Adam met Marcus’ eyes with a sharpness that was far more frightening than his anger. The android did his best to look visibly apologetic. “You saved Leo’s life,” Adam said slowly. It wasn’t a question, so Marcus didn’t respond. “And you didn’t know about Douglas?”

Marcus shook his head vigorously. “He called me in the middle of the night and said he needed my help. I was just so happy that he was alive—” He stopped with a choked-off voice crack. “If I knew what he was planning, I would’ve warned you.”

In retrospect, he probably should’ve expected what happened next. Repeated evidence had shown that Adam was a touchy guy and, even worse, a hugger . Still, even Marcus had trouble processing the speed at which Adam scooped him up into his arms.

“Okay.” Adam sniffled and Marcus realized with horror that he was crying . “I forgive you.”

Marcus locked eyes with Bree in a clear sign of ‘help me’ . Bree just took a picture. Traitor.

Adam dropped him almost immediately, and Chase was the first to speak. “No more secrets between us four,” he declared, then rolled his eyes when Leo cleared his throat. “Us five . We’ve got to stick together, right?”

They all nodded in agreement, including Marcus. “No more secrets.”

If Leo had heat vision, Marcus would’ve been burned to a crisp right then and there.

There was a blessed moment of peace, but because these were the Davenport-Dooleys and nothing was ever that simple, Adam’s face broke into an unabashed grin. “Hey, Marcus,” he said. “Do you have superstrength?”

His gaze slid toward Chase, and Marcus caught on immediately. “Yep,” he said. “I sure do.”

Chase had the sense to start running.

III.

Marcus never considered himself an especially level-headed being.

He scoffed when Dad compared him to fictional androids like Data, who were cold and emotionless and ruthlessly logical. Marcus wasn’t like that; he had passions and wants and, loathe as he was to admit it, feelings .

But humans weren’t particularly logical creatures either, and it was easy to feel superior to them. He’d always particularly detested their tendency to delay the inevitable. Plugging your ears and ignoring the problem didn’t make it go away, so why bother?

Seven days after Marcus betrayed his father, he still hadn’t called him.

The worst part was that he knew exactly why he’d put it off. Unlike humans, whose brains were separate entities capable of tricking their owner, he could never deceive himself. He knew there were only so many ways this could end, and for all that he was evil and not very good at it, he was still an android. Just as Dad would never betray him, Marcus could never betray his creator.

(Right?)

Still, he wasn’t one to put things off, and he had to maintain some semblance of superiority, so on the seventh day he sucked it up and called.

Dad answered on the third ring.

“Marcus?”

A part of him untensed; he crushed it beneath his foot. “Dad,” he said, half-mockingly.

“I hope you’re calling to apologize,” Dad snapped. It was an angry tone, the kind of genuine anger that Marcus had only heard from his creator once or twice in his life. Marcus didn’t have instincts, but he did have pattern recognition, and his eyes glowed green at the sound.

Which was ridiculous. Even if Marcus’ own father were a threat (which was ridiculous —Marcus loved Dad dearly but he was, after all, just a human), there were far less lethal alternatives to lazers .

(There was a reason he hadn’t just lazered Leo’s head off and been done with it. He preferred clean kills.)

“Apologize?” He said incredulously. “For what? Saving the Plan?”

“Saving—? ” Dad scoffed and sputtered.

“Did you seriously plan to keep them on the Triton app forever?” Marcus interrupted coolly. “You know that wouldn’t work.”

He’d been under the Triton app once before, when Douglas wanted to test out a newer version. The app itself wasn’t painful. Quite the opposite—it was so pleasant that the horror hadn’t set in until after he was released from its hold. The feeling of not being in complete control of his actions, though it’d only been for a moment, unsettled him so thoroughly that he’d begged Dad to never do it again.

Dad had only seemed amused by the request.

“I don’t see why not ,” Dad argued. “There’s no reason someone couldn’t theoretically spend their entire lives under the Triton app .”

Marcus shuddered at the thought. Just a few seconds scarred him for life. To be like that for years or even decades—what would that do to a person?

“So you’d rather they be mindless slaves?” He asked. Marcus was no expert, but that didn’t sound like a healthy parent-child relationship. Not that Dad would be interested in such a thing, but still.

Dad made an ‘ehh’ noise. “Not necessarily mindless. You know how the app works. And since when do you care?”

He didn’t really have an answer to that, so he switched tactics. “And what was up with that robot?” He hedged. “That thing could’ve killed me.”

“I was bluffing!” Dad huffed. There was tapping in the background, as if he were typing on a keyboard.

The sound sparked a memory, or rather, a myriad of memories. Marcus had worked side-by-side with Dad in the lab for his entire life. He knew all of his tech quirks and oddities, the little trademarks that each creator left on their creations.

For example, his tendency to put the CPU in the chest, instead of the head.

He stopped breathing. His fans whirred faster to make up for the deficit.

“Marcus, if you keep up this teenage rebellion and deviate from the Plan —”

“No, you weren’t.”

Dad paused and stuttered. “What?”

Marcus touched the spot where the robot had kicked him—his chest, where a heart would’ve been if he were human. It was still dented.

“If you were bluffing,” he said, a horrible certainty overtaking him, “You would’ve aimed for the head.”

“That’s not the point!” Dad shouted. “Everything I’ve built, everything I’ve worked for, you ruined it!”

(He didn’t deny it.)

He didn’t deny it .

Marcus’ vision filled with green.

“You could’ve killed me.” His voice came out as a synthesized mess he hadn’t heard in years; his mouth wasn’t even moving. He’d been angry before, furious even, but the mix of rage and horror within him combined into an entirely new emotion. He didn’t know what to do with it. “And you don’t even care, do you?”

In the background of the call, the tapping continued.

“Please, Marcus, it’s not like you can die . You were never alive to begin with.”

He blinked harshly. He could barely see. “That’s not the point! You—you…”

The green grew.

The tapping stopped.

“Marcus? ”

“Yes, Father?”

Chapter Text

Leo loved adventure.

Of course he did. As a child, he’d always had a vivid imagination, and he never quite outgrew it. He loved video games, comic books, and superheroes, so he was obviously delighted when he found out that his new life was a combination of all three. His step-dad was Batman (well, more like his cheap knock-off, Titanio) and his step-siblings were bionic superheroes! What more could a teenage boy want?

That was until he discovered that being a hero was much less ‘adventure’ and much more ‘the people you love are constantly in danger’. And it was until he realized that, as a non-bionic human, he was relegated to the role of side character.

Seriously. He didn’t even have any supersmarts going for him.

So he wasn’t surprised, per se, when the others made him stay behind so they could go save Donald. Just… disappointed. He put up a fuss, of course, because he wouldn’t be a Dooley if he didn’t. “I can help!” He argued. “I’ve fought him before.”

Bree snorted. “You mean Marcus has fought him before.”

“...I wrestled his dad,” Leo said flatly. “And I’ve seen Marcus fight, so I’m still at an advantage.”

Adam ruffled his hair. “I don’t know about that .” Leo batted his hand away and yelped; it was like striking solid steel. Adam, the jerk, didn’t so much as twitch. “We’re trained to handle situations like this, so let us deal with it.”

“No offense, Leo,” Bree added condescendingly, “But last time we listened to you didn’t go so well.”

“All of this happened because you didn’t listen to me,” he muttered, but he knew it was a moot point. Across the room, Chase winced.

In the end, Leo was left in the lab. His mom was away on a news assignment and wouldn’t return for another three days. The others were gone and E.D.D.Y was offline, which meant for the first time since he’d moved in with the Davenports, he was truly alone.

The silence lasted about… thirty minutes.

“HELL- OHHHH? ”

Leo did not fall out of his seat in shock.

“OH.” E.D.D.Y’s face appeared on the screen line-by-line. “IT’S YOU .” His eyes roved the room. “WHERE’S EVERYONE ELSE?”

Leo did not slowly climb back into his seat. “They’re gone,” he groaned. “They went to save Big D.”

“OH.” E.D.D.Y’s screen flickered. “THAT MUST BE WHY MARCUS DEACTIVATED ME.”

Leo’s mouth dropped open. “ Who deactivated you?”

E.D.D.Y’s eyes narrowed in an unimpressed glare. “DID I STUTTER?”

Marcus, Leo thought incredulously, then: That rat! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him. ‘Turned over a new leaf’, my—

He groaned and dragged a hand down his face. He had no right to act surprised, did he? He’d known that Marcus was evil, or at least untrustworthy, and still he’d allowed him to stay. Sure, the others didn’t believe him, but Leo could’ve found a way to convince them. He just didn’t, because…

Because he’d wanted to discover Marcus’ wrongdoings on his own. Because he’d wanted to be the hero.

Now his family was in danger, and it was his fault. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He could fix this. He had to fix this.

“Hey, E.D.D.Y,” he said. “How did Douglas show up on your screen?”

E.D.D.Y sniffed. “HE MUST’VE HACKED ME.”

“Yeah, but he had to have sent a signal, right? Can’t you track it?”

“OH,” E.D.D.Y said. “I GUESS I CAN.”

The AI’s visage disappeared and was replaced by the somewhat grainy image of a dark room. Leo squinted and saw a movement in the bottom right corner. He followed it and saw Adam, Bree, and Chase, surrounded by a blurry gray wall.

He didn’t see Donald.

“Finally awake?” Douglas entered the camera’s range from the left. Leo’s siblings slowly struggled to their feet. Too slowly. Leo’s mind immediately jumped to the worst conclusions: that they were drugged, injured, or that their bionics…

But he could do nothing but watch.

Bree was the first to speak. “Where’s Mr. Davenport?”

Douglas sighed. “Not even a ‘hello? Where am I? What do you want from us? ’” He shook his head. “I’ve been planning this for years , and the first thing you say is—” His voice pitched into a mocking falsetto. “'Where’s Mr. Davenport?’ ”

He pressed a button on a small remote. “He’s right here!” A cage descended from the ceiling. The floor beneath it opened to reveal an industrial meat grinder.

Was that already there? Leo couldn’t help but wonder. Or did he build it? All by himself?

“ Mr. Davenport! ” Adam and Bree shouted in unison. The man groaned and looked down at them.

“Who has that in their house?” Chase yelled.

“Pretty neat, huh? I got the idea from my last hide-out.” Douglas held out the remote, revealing that it was attached to his belt by a chain. “I also got this idea from my last hide-out,” he said bitterly.

“NOT THE TIME, BRAT,” E.D.D.Y said. Leo immediately quit his smug dance.

Douglas turned to his brother. When he spoke, his voice had lost its manic cheerfulness. “You really ruined my life, you know. It was bad enough you had to take my work and kick me out of the company. But then you even had to steal my thunder!”

He swept his arms wide. “I had a dramatic reveal planned! ‘Adam, Bree, Chase… I’m your father.’ Lights and everything. But you ,” he pointed, “You took that from me. Like you take everything.”

“You gave me no choice!” Donald yelled. His voice was hoarse. “You were going to use kids for evil purposes.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!” Douglas yelled back. Then he took a deep breath and wiped imaginary dust off his shoulders. “But you know what? I forgive you. What goes around…”

He slunk into the corner, a place so shadowed Leo hadn’t bothered to look. Now that he did, he saw…

Marcus. Standing, eyes shut, with a wire leading from his arm to an outlet.

“...Comes around.”

“Marcus?” Chase asked, then shouted, “Marcus!”

“Plead all you want,” Douglas said. “He won’t answer.” He flicked Marcus on the side of the head. The boy didn’t so much as blink. “His upper cognitive processes are shut off for the time being.”

“How is that possible?” Chase’s voice took on the ‘ this is a difficult problem that I don’t understand ’ tone that Leo was far too familiar with. “There’s no way that such precise mind control could work on the human brain.”

Douglas chuckled. “But Marcus isn’t human, is he?”

“Even if he’s bionic,” Chase said in an irritated tone (Leo winced; he knew that was a sore spot for them), ”His brain shouldn’t function any differently.”

Douglas was silent for a moment too long. Then he threw back his head and laughed so loudly and harshly that he almost fell over; he put his arm on Marcus’ shoulder for stability. “Oh my God,” he wheezed. “You didn’t tell them?” This seemed to be directed toward Marcus, who of course didn’t answer.

Douglas walked almost off-screen, to a computer on a desk. Still wheezing under his breath, he pulled up an image on screen, but the footage was too grainy to really make heads or tails of it.

“E.D.D.Y,” Leo hissed. “Can’t you zoom and enhance or something?”

“...NO,” the AI said condescendingly.

“Marcus,” Douglas said, tapping the screen, “Is just an android. He’s not sleeping, he’s recharging.”

Dead silence. Leo’s mouth hung open in shock. That—

…Actually made a lot of sense. Huh.

So Marcus technically didn’t betray us , Leo thought. He’s not acting of his own free will? Well, I guess that depends on whether or not you consider androids to have free will in the first place.

And wasn’t that a crazy debate to have with himself.

“I KNEW I FELT A KINSHIP WITH HIM!” E.D.D.Y screeched. ”HE—HEY, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”

“I have to save them!” Leo shouted. “I can’t just sit here and watch this!”

The camera feed faded and the screen returned to E.D.D.Y’s face. The AI ‘ hmm ’d’ thoughtfully. “YOU KNOW,” he said, “DONNIE DID LEAVE BEHIND SPECIFIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR ‘WORST CASE SCENARIOS’. AND I CAN’T THINK OF A SCENARIO WORSE THAN BEING STUCK HERE WITH YOU AND TASHA.”

Leo heard a ‘zzip’ behind him and turned to see the characteristic blue of a Davenholo™ (holograms; the man had to stick a ‘Daven-’ on everything). The hologram directed him to a secret weapon’s vault under the lab (actually, it specifically told him not to go there, but po-tay-to/po-tah-to).

Leo went to the weapons vault and picked out a myriad of weapons.

Armed with a wagon full of exoskeleton, Leo went to—

“WOAH, YOU DON’T THINK YOU’RE GOING ALONE, DO YOU?”

“Uh… yeah?”

“TAKE ME WITH YOU!”

Leo’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why do you want to go?” E.D.D.Y was annoying at best and a menace at worst. Leo couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything helpful.

“AS MUCH AS I HATE TO SAY IT,” the AI deadpanned. “YOUR SAFETY IS MY NUMBER THREE PRIORITY. MY PROGRAMMING WON’T LET ME LET YOU GO ALL BY YOUR WEAK, HUMAN SELF.”

“Aw, that’s actually kind of—wait a minute. What’s priorities number one and two?”

“THAT’S CLASSIFIED.”

Armed with a maniacal AI and a wagon full of exoskeleton, Leo went to save his family.

Well. First, he stopped by the kitchen.

I.

Donald never wanted to be a father.

Never. Not once in his life.

He and Douglas were sixteen when they graduated from high school. They wanted a fresh start at a college far, far away, a place where they weren’t known as ‘geniuses’ or ‘freaks’ because people like them were the norm. They got it; those days were perhaps their happiest.

Kids were the last thing on his mind. Mostly, the only thing on his mind was partying, women, and regrettably, studying, because if his GPA dropped below a 4.0 the world might just end. Any free time was spent worrying about Douglas, who unlike Donald, didn’t seem to want to leave their dorm room at all. Donald began to seriously worry for his more fragile twin, and so went out of his way to encourage him to socialize.

He got his wish. In their junior year, Douglas met Giselle Vickers, a freshman far too bright for her age. They hit it off, and to Donald’s astonishment, Douglas got a girlfriend before he did (a fact he never failed to brag about).

Giselle inevitably dumped him, of course, and though Donald awkwardly comforted his brother, a part of him was ecstatic. He’d begun to think that Douglas would abandon their dream of a shared company.

Douglas’ mental health took a sharp decline after that. Donald assumed it was because of the break-up, all the way until he came home to find Douglas face-down on the bathroom floor. Many psychiatrists and one diagnosis later, Douglas ended up dropping out of med school. That was fine. Being a doctor wasn’t their real passion, after all, and degrees were just a formality; they both knew they were smart enough without one.

So in the summer of 1993, Davenport Industries began.

Technology was their specialty; more accurately, it was Donald’s specialty. His comfort zone. But he suffered through med school because the thought of Douglas being better than him, even at this one thing, was unbearable. Douglas was already cooler, smarter, more creative—if he let him have this one thing, then…

Then why would he stay around at all?

Anyways. That’s why they started with robots, and why Donald immediately turned down Douglas’ suggestions of a human framework. At first, he thought it was a joke; it wouldn’t be the most outlandish idea he’d ever had. ‘Let’s strap rockets onto a motorcycle, Donnie! Let’s build a rollercoaster in the front yard, Donnie! Let’s make bionic super-soldiers, Donnie!’

See? Not unthinkable. Douglas dropped the idea almost immediately, to his credit, and they ended up scrapping their robots.

And, well. You know the story.

Even in those first days—the days after Donald took the kids and ran, the days after his brother exploded in a televised ball of light and shrapnel—he never really thought of himself as a father. Adam and Bree didn’t call him ‘Dad’, a spot they reserved for Douglas, even as they grew older and forgot his existence. It felt… damning, in a way. Deserved. Like they knew what he’d done, like they were accusing him.

Which was ridiculous, of course. They were just babies.

Donald never wanted kids—he was a bachelor, playboy, commitment-phobe, what-have-you—but one day, he looked up and realized that he was a father of three. Three became four, became…

Five.

"...How?" He kept his eyes on Marcus, the boy he’d thought was Douglas’ son, who looked so much like a younger version of Donald it could’ve been true. Knowing he’d been designed like that—it made his skin crawl. Especially now, so still and silent he could’ve been dead. "The androids we built were nowhere near as advanced." E.D.D.Y was an advanced AI, possibly the most intelligent one in the world, and even he couldn’t fake such a human-like intelligence.

Douglas snorted. “Do you think I spent the last fifteen years twiddling my thumbs?”

And wasn’t that a horrifying thought. Even after fifteen years, Donald still barely had a grasp of the three’s bionics. When Douglas first showed up, he’d thought—he’d hoped —that he’d be able to handle him. They were twins, after all. Donald still knew him, would always know him.

Even now, suspended in a cage over a gaping pit of grinding gears, he knew that Douglas would never hurt him. The kids, maybe, but not him.

Then again, if asked sixteen years ago, he’d say that Douglas would never perform unethical experiments on children. So.

“He knew you were alive?” Donald asked.

“ Knew? He was in contact with me the whole time!” Douglas laughed. “You really didn’t know? Wow. I didn’t think he was that good of an actor. He must’ve had you wrapped around his little finger.” He shook his head and sighed like a disappointed parent. “Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. You always did have a thing for poor, innocent victims.”

He pressed a button, and the diagram vanished. The image returned to a loading bar. “If it makes you feel any better, he really liked you. I had to use the Triton app to control him.” He tapped the screen. His voice was dark and bitter. “I saw you put a block on the kids’ app. Not a very good one, though. I’ll have it removed in a few hours.”

That’s what the bar was doing, then: counting down the minutes until his kids lost free will. From what he could see, it was about one-fourths of the way full, but he couldn’t be sure.

“Hey, don’t look so sad!” Douglas told him. “I’ll let you keep Marcus. He’s about run his course, anyways.”

Donald paled.

Chase was the first to question it. He’d probably already connected the dots, but Donald’s son took after his father: always unsure. “What do you mean?”

“Donnie knows.” Douglas looked up, up, and locked eyes with his brother. “Dontch’ya, Donnie?”

He did.

“The reason Davenbots™ never went public,” Donald said, not daring to look at his children. “Is that we couldn’t get them to last more than four years.”

“Bingo!” Douglas bounced over to Marcus. “ I , in all my infinite wisdom, managed to get it to about five years, give or take. Marcus here won’t make it to his 16th birthday.”

Douglas chuckled, and the sound was familiar and alien all at once. “Oh, but don’t tell him that,” he leaned in and whispered, using his hand to block the noise as if they couldn’t all hear him, “I promised him a car.”

If asked fifteen years ago, Donald would lie and say he didn’t really have a ‘scariest’ memory, but he’d be thinking about finding his brother cold and blue. If asked fourteen years ago, he’d be torn between finding the kids and watching that final car chase.

He didn’t know you could watch someone die twice.

“Yeah, he didn’t last very long. All that tech—” He waved a hand. “Not good for the system. The bionics kill the battery and then nothing else works. Even less so for such an advanced AI. That’s why I wanted to use a biological framework in the first place.”

“So Marcus…” Chase asked.

“He’s got about a year left in him, if he’s frugal. But knowing him, it’s more like six months.”

“So what you did to Marcus is what you’re gonna do to us?” Adam asked. His tone was very even, which Donald knew was a bad sign; his oldest son only spoke like that when he was trying to keep the others calm.

“Well, not exactly the same. As Chase pointed out, mind control is impossible.” Douglas grinned at Chase. Chase didn’t smile back, and Douglas’ grin fell. “But yes, I’ll have full control of your bionics.”

A piercing alarm rang through the warehouse. Donald flinched and saw Adam put his hands over Chase’s ears. Douglas raced toward the alarm system and punched in a code.

“—it!” Douglas sighed as the alarm stopped, then slinked toward a wall of screens Donald presumed to be the camera system. “Now, what set it off?” He stood in front of it with his back to the kids, but at the angle Donald was above him, he could see the screens just fine.

So when Douglas froze, Donald knew exactly why. “Well, would you look at that?” He muttered. “We’ve got a visitor!”

Douglas moved to the side and let them all get a view.

(When Donald discovered that Tasha had a son, he gasped.

It wasn’t the responsibility, or even the fact that he had three bionic secrets locked away in his basement, that gave him pause. Embarrassingly, his first thought was: what if he doesn’t like me? It’s how he knew that he was in too deep to back out.

Kids never really liked him, even when he was one. He was brash, impatient, and (as Bree constantly reminded him) lame . Chase thought he hung the stars: one out of three, and he was the only person they’d ever met. He could only imagine how much a child with expectations would hate him.

When he told Tasha his fears, she just laughed. “You’re overthinking it,” she said. “There’s no skill . You just have to treat them well. I’m sure he’ll love you.”)

The other kids were careful around their weakest family member. Donald, however, found it hard to deny him anything. He was bright and curious and obviously so sad when he was excluded. It… reminded him of someone.

(What didn’t ?)

Donald had looked Tasha in the eye and promised that he’d keep him safe.

If asked fifteen years ago, Donald would say that the most important thing in his life was his family, and it wouldn’t be a lie. If asked fourteen years ago, he’d say it was the company, but he’d be thinking about the three little kids in his basement. Adam’s hand-made finger paintings; the glee in Chase’s eyes whenever Donald spoke; every dent in the lab created by Bree’s excited superspeed.

(Donald had time travel.

Not now, but in an alternate future that could be his if he wanted. He cracked the code that renowned physicists and engineers alike thought impossible to crack. He alone could control the timeline, could go back and fix all his mistakes, all of Douglas’ mistakes—

Bang!

“Adam!”

Donald sighed, and after only a moment of thought, wiped his notes on the subject. Going back wasn’t worth what he might lose.)

He couldn’t say when he became a father. Was it the day he wrapped Bree’s ankle in a cast and wiped away her tears? Or the night he slept in the lab so Adam wouldn’t have nightmares? Or was it the weeks spent worrying, biting his nails, pulling every string he had to figure out why Chase’s health was taking such a nosedive, only to discover that he just had the flu?

Maybe. Or maybe it was the very moment he laid eyes on them.

“Marcus!” Douglas shouted. Marcus’ eyes, glowing a bright neon green, popped open like he’d never been asleep. Idle. Whatever. “Go take care of Leo. Permanently.”

Marcus’ eyes flicked toward the screen, and he paused for a moment as if digesting the information. His eyes twitched, narrowed—the first spark of emotion Donald had seen from him—and he could’ve sworn that the green dimmed by the smallest fraction. In the end, he marched forward without a word.

He left Douglas standing there with a raised hand. “Come on!” Douglas yelled after him, as if Marcus were just a normal sullen teenager. “You just gonna leave your creator hanging?”

(Donald’s brother was dead.

He’d known it for years and years. The first time, Douglas went out in a fiery explosion so devastating there was nothing left to bury. The second time was the same, except now his ashes were a little ceramic vase.

Before Douglas was dead, he was alive for fourteen years. Long enough to have a child.

Donald’s fingers tapped on the arm of his chair as he thought. What was his nephew like, he wondered? Was he like Douglas, or completely different, or something in-between? Did he have Douglas’ laugh? His face? His smile?

What had they done together, he wondered? What would Donald ask him when he arrived?

In a way, the boy—Marcus, he remembered, Marcus Aurelius Davenport—knew Donald’s brother better than he did. And didn’t that sting?

But regardless, it was Douglas’ child; Donald’s own blood. Even if it were bionic, or dangerous, or completely deranged, Donald would care for it.

It was the least he could do.)

Donald never wanted to be a father, but he was one, and he wouldn’t give it up for the world. Marcus wasn’t human, but he had rebelled , once if not twice! If he were intelligent enough to do that and more than human-like enough to pass the Turing test, then… it just wouldn’t be right to leave him.

And he looked so much like a kid.

He would fix this. And if possible, he’d save Marcus, too.

II.

“We’ve got to get out of here while we have time,” Bree hissed. “Any ideas?” Douglas had left the room, but who knew when he’d be back.

She looked at Chase because, well, it was Chase . As much as she hated to admit it, that big brain was occasionally useful. Sure enough, Chase’s brow was furrowed, and he spoke in what Bree had dubbed his ‘mission leader voice’. “Bree, what do you see?”

“What do y—oh.” Bree realized that the rings were spinning so quickly only she could see them. To the others, they must’ve looked like a chest-high wall of gray blurs. “There’s metal rings, two of them. They’re spinning really fast.”

“They must be controlled by magnets,” Chase muttered. “My molecular kinesis—”

Adam coughed. “ Telekinesis .”

“Not the time, Adam.” Chase glared. “It isn’t strong enough to hold these.”

“What about your magnetism app?” Bree asked.

Chase rolled his eyes as if the sheer magnitude of her stupidity was aneurysm-inducing. “ Also not strong enough.”

“Then why don’t you use both?” Adam asked.

“Because—” Chase stopped, scoffed, sputtered, and finally admitted, “I… don’t know.”

“It’ll overload your systems!” Mr. Davenport stage-whispered down at them. “Especially bionics you’re barely even used to.”

“We don’t have much time,” Bree pointed out. “So unless you have any other ideas…”

“It could short circuit your wires! Chase, you may never be able to use your bionics again.”

Chase paled and nodded grimly. He was looking up, at Mr. Davenport; Bree’s eyes went toward the computer where the Triton app was slowly downloading; Adam glanced at the monitor where Marcus had chased Leo off-screen.

“We should wait until Douglas comes back,” Bree hissed, “Odds are he’s got cameras. And with Marcus…”

“We’ll want the element of surprise,” Chase said.

Bree nodded. “Exactly.”

“Alright.” Chase shook out his shoulders and straightened. “Move toward the center, just in case.”

Adam obediently grabbed Bree and squeezed her tight. Chase moved behind them. They waited two minutes that seemed like an eternity until Douglas returned and strode toward the computer to check the Triton app’s progress.

Marcus followed behind him.

The thing was: Bree had really liked Marcus. She’d thought that they had an understanding . He knew what it was like to live under the thumb of a maniacal father, to view his bionics as a curse, to want nothing more than a normal life.

She’d figured that he knew something , obviously, but she thought that the bionics were the extent of it. Their father was a madman, and he’d abandoned his final son in the pursuit of something greater. It made sense—what better way to get the family in one place than to send his son to live with them?

Her eyes zeroed in on the smudge of red on his shirt sleeve.

She’d thought they were kindred spirits. Sheep in a pen, being poked and prodded along by their shepherds. But Marcus was just a wolf.

She looked up and locked eyes with him. His glowed dim green; there was nothing behind them. Like he was just a machine wearing her brother’s face.

“Oh, finally!” Douglas clapped his hands together. “The Triton app’s unblocked.” He turned to Mr. Davenport and said in a derogatory tone, “And it barely took two hours. I always was the better programmer.”

“You won’t get away with this!” Mr. Davenport screamed. He was acting, probably, trying to distract Douglas from the way Chase brought his fingers to his temple. But the anger in his voice sounded real. “I own the government, I will hunt you down —”

Several things happened at once.

First, Chase flung the rings to the side with a grunt.

Second, Douglas collapsed to the ground.

III.

E.D.D.Y tracked the camera signal to an abandoned warehouse just outside of Mission Creek.

Leo had to take a bus to get there. Then he had to walk a few miles, since the bus route didn’t go right into the abandoned warehouse district. By the time he actually got there, he was already sweaty, out-of-breath, and overall wishing he had some superspeed. Or even just a moderately athletic build.

All that was probably the reason that he missed the blur of motion in the corner of his eye until it was too late.

Speaking of superspeed.

Leo was knocked backward. He put his hand to his nose; it gushed blood and hurt like nothing he’d ever experienced. Lost in his pain, he forgot about Marcus entirely until the boy grabbed him by the throat and lifted him clear off the ground.

He couldn’t breathe.

Leo clawed at Marcus’ arms on reflex, hands shaking and vision blurred with tears.

He couldn’t breathe .

Marcus’ eyes glowed vivid green, and Leo remembered himself. Desperately, he dug through his pockets for the little square of aluminium he’d brought with him. His hands closed on it and he brought it up and slapped his hand over the back of Marcus’ neck.

If he had an iota of breath to spare, he’d be praying: ‘ Please work, please work, please work…’

Leo fell to the ground in an undignified heap. He rubbed at his throat, gasping for breath, nose still throbbing in pain. When he looked up, he saw that Marcus was still standing over him, eyes open and green and staring at nothing.

He didn’t move.

“OH, RIGHT,” E.D.D.Y said. “YOU BLOCKED THE SIGNAL, NOT THE APP.”

“How do we get it out of him?” Leo croaked.

“I CAN PROBABLY REMOVE IT,” E.D.D.Y said. “I AM A VIRUS. YOU GOT A USB DRIVE?”

Leo uploaded E.D.D.Y to Marcus’ hard drive and immediately retreated. Who knew what the android would do once he was free?

Crumple to his knees like a puppet with cut strings, apparently—or an android with no power. And once he fell, he didn’t move. He didn’t so much as twitch.

Leo approached cautiously and retrieved the USB drive. “E.D.D.Y?” He whispered. “What’s wrong with him?”

E.D.D.Y’s screen flickered on. “NO IDEA,” he said. “WHAT, YOU THINK I’M THE ROBOT WHISPERER OR SOMETHING?”

Leo would’ve glared, but he was afraid to take his eyes off of the potential threat in front of him. “...Marcus?” He called. “Are you okay? Did Douglas—”

Marcus’ hands clenched. Leo jumped back like he’d been electrocuted, but the android only tore up chunks of grass and soil. The motion was violent, but when Marcus spoke, his voice was perfectly flat and emotionless ( robotic ).

“He killed me.”

Leo blinked. Has he lost it? Can he lose it? He glanced at the warehouse again. He should’ve been inside already, saving his family, not out here dealing with a mad robot.

But Marcus still wasn’t moving.

Leo crouched, but didn’t approach. “What do you mean?”

“The glitches aren’t because of a capsule,” he said in that same flat voice, “My body is wearing down. I wasn’t built to last.” His hands finally unclenched. “Well, I was ,” he added darkly. The first hint of emotion that Leo had detected. “Just long enough to get him what he really wanted.”

Leo didn’t even know how to begin unpacking that.

“I’m not surprised,” Marcus continued in a more matter-of-fact tone. “I knew. I knew , so why—” He stopped. If he were human, if there were any emotion in his voice or stuttered breaths at all, Leo would’ve thought he were crying.

Marcus still didn’t move, didn’t look at him, but when he spoke his words were clearly addressed. “Douglas and the others are inside. He has Mr. Davenport in a cage over a meat grinder. The remote for it is chained to his belt.” His words weren’t fast, but they were one unified chain with no pauses for breath. “The rings around Adam, Bree, and Chase are controlled by magnets.”

Leo looked at him, then at the warehouse where his family waited. He wondered briefly if this was a trap, then immediately dismissed the idea. He’d known Marcus for six months now; he wasn’t that good of an actor.

So, against every bone in his body, he turned to the boy—android—and asked, “What about you?”

He thought he saw Marcus twitch, but he couldn’t be sure. “What about me?”

“Aren’t you coming with me? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this ,” he gestured to all 5”5 of his body, “Is not exactly mission-going material.”

“Then why are you even here?”

Leo rolled his eyes. “Well, obviously I had to try.”

Marcus said nothing. Leo sighed. “Look, I have no idea what happened with you and Douglas and frankly, I’m not sure I care. But I do know that you have a family in there,” he pointed at the warehouse, “And I don’t want to be the one to tell them you abandoned them.”

“Besides,” Leo added off-handedly, “Don’t you want revenge on Douglas?”

No response. Leo sighed and began to step past him, but at the last second, Marcus rose to his feet. His eyes were warm brown and, to Leo’s astonishment, it looked like he’d been crying.

“Well, in that case,” Marcus said. “I think I have a plan.”

Leo grimaced at the sadistic glee in the android’s eyes. “I’m thrilled."

IV.

Bree blinked, still in ‘running’ pose. Marcus stood over Douglas’ crumpled body with the remote in his hand, a half-broken chain hanging from it. His eyes were brown. He held up his hands. “I’m on your—”

He sped out of the way of Bree’s flying kick. “Where’s Leo?” She crouched low, ready to pounce.

“He’s right outside!” Marcus shouted, holding his arms over his head. “Calling for help.”

She didn’t attack, but didn’t leave her fighting pose either. “And you..?”

“Leo managed to block the Triton app’s signal.” He gestured to the back of his neck. “Aluminium.” If he were anyone else, Bree would’ve called his tone ‘grudgingly respectful’.

Douglas groaned and shifted. Marcus’ expression fell flat, but he kept his eyes on Bree. “What should I do with him?”

Bree’s eyes narrowed. “How do I know this isn’t the Triton app talking?”

Marcus was silent for a moment, then in one rapid-fire sentence, he spat: “My middle name is Aurelius. We had a dog that Dad gave bionics. I told him that it ran away, but really I took him away because I was jealous. My favorite color is red, my favorite band is Marina and the Diamonds, and I’m the one that disabled the GPS and almost killed Leo. Is that something I would say if I were tricking you?”

“You what!?”

Douglas shifted again. Bree huffed and tabled the discussion for later. “Tie him up,” she said curtly. She risked a glance back at Adam, who had helped Chase to his feet and was now walking toward them. By the time she looked back, Douglas was securely tied to a shelf with wires.

She blinked. Marcus was faster than she’d thought.

Douglas was conscious now, and talking. “Marcus, I’m disappointed in you,” he panted, wiggling a hand into his jacket pocket. “You should know to frisk a man before you chain him up!”

He held a remote up in triumph, and before even Bree could move, a hand emerged from the shelf behind him and snatched it away.

Bree jumped, but Marcus only said: “Leo. I thought that was you.”

“Oh, come on ,” Douglas whined and his head thunked back against the shelf. “Again?”

Leo came out from behind the shelf with a sheepish grin.

“You—but you—” Adam whipped his head from Leo to Marcus and back again. “He killed you!” Chase, leaning on Adam for support, nodded in fevered agreement. His skin looked pale and waxy.

“Well, as you can see, I’m fine,” Leo said, gesturing to his body in demonstration. Bree could see it wasn’t exactly true. His voice was nasally and his nose swollen, slightly red; a ring of purple lined his throat. Her eyes flickered to the scarlet smudge on Marcus’ sleeve and narrowed.

On the list of things they’d done to each other—on the list of things they could do—a broken nose was pretty tame. But it was Leo . The weakest and most frail among them.

No one touched him.

“And I’ve been working pretty hard to keep him that way,” Marcus added, oblivious to her gaze.  “Which is why he was supposed to be waiting outside .”

Leo shrugged. “You didn’t really expect me to listen, did you?”

“Sorry to interrupt,” a voice screamed from the heavens, “But can somebody please GET ME DOWN FROM HERE?”

Marcus winced. “Right. Sorry, Mr. Davenport.” Then he walked toward the pit, and to all their amazement, simply floated up to the cage. 

“He can fly?” Chase screeched, bad health momentarily forgotten.

Marcus shrugged. “I can levitate,” he shouted, ripping the cage away from its chain and lowering it to the ground. “You can, too. Or you should be able to.”

“Can we talk about this after I GET OUT OF THE CAGE!?” Mr. Davenport screamed. Marcus winced and ripped the bars open, then picked Mr. Davenport up in a bridal carry. Bree tensed, but the android only floated back over the pit.

“Thank you.” Mr. Davenport sighed as his feet touched the ground. “Now can someone please explain what just happened?”

They all looked at Marcus, but Leo was the first to speak. “When I saw that you were in trouble, I came to help,” he said, “And I remembered something Chase told me a while ago, about Faraday cages.”

“You used aluminum to block the signals to his chip,” Bree said.

Marcus nodded. “With no orders, I was just idle, and E.D.D.Y was able to manually patch himself into my CPU and uninstall the Triton app.”

Chase wrinkled his nose. “You had E.D.D.Y in your head?”

They all shuddered in sympathy.

Marcus nodded. “It wasn’t a pleasant experience.” (“YOU’RE NOT ALL SUNSHINE AND RAINBOWS YOURSELF,” E.D.D.Y piped up from Leo’s wrist. Everyone ignored him.) “The plan was to pretend to be loyal to Douglas, only to betray him when the time was right.”

“Really?” Douglas drawled. “Again? Talk about a dead h— aghck.”

That was the sound someone made when a boot drove into their ribs. Everyone stared at her. Except for Marcus, who stared at his creator.

“Marcus said you were calling for help?” Mr. Davenport tentatively changed the subject. “Who did you call?”

“A number Marcus gave me.” Leo held up his phone on display. “He said it was one of your personal contacts?”

“My persona— my personal contacts? ” Mr. Davenport spun around to Marcus. “How did you even get those?”

Marcus shrugged. “I am a spy,” he pointed out.

Silence.

“ Was ,” the android corrected hastily. “ Was a spy. I’m not anymore. Obviously.”

“And what a waste,” Douglas muttered. He pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a migraine. “What’s the point of building an android if it’s not even going to be loyal?”

Marcus’ face twisted in anger. Bree couldn’t help but wonder if the emotion was genuine or just another act. “What’s the point of building an android if you’re just going to let it die?” He snapped.

Douglas only shrugged. “How was I supposed to know you’d go and gain sentience on me?”

Marcus’ face fell flat again, and he huffed and looked away.

“...So what now?” Chase asked. He looked somewhat better; at least he wasn’t leaning on Adam anymore. “Can Marcus come back? And can we fix him?”

“Well—” Mr. Davenport said.

“‘Come back’?” Bree asked incredulously. “Seriously?” She looked around, but no one seemed to be on her side. Typical. As always, she had to be the voice of reason. “He betrayed us. He lied to us. He plotted against us. And he has been this whole time. He’s not even human .”

She threw up her hands and glared at Douglas. “For all we know this is another trick and he’s hardwired to betray us all the first chance he gets.”

“That’s not how AI works,” Chase muttered. “Their behavior is conditioned, not programmed.”

“Still,” Adam said nervously. “Is letting him come back really a good idea? It didn’t turn out so well last time.”

“What other option do we have? Lock him up like Douglas?”

“We are not locking him up—” Mr. Davenport said.

“Why not?” Bree asked. “It’s not like we can let him come back with us. Think about Leo.” She pointed at Leo’s swollen, possibly broken, nose. “Think about Tasha.”

A low blow, but it worked. Mr. Davenport’s face fell.

“People, people!” Leo held out his hands in a ‘T’. “Time-out! The guy just saved our lives, and you’re talking about—what, putting him in jail? He also just got betrayed, in case you forgot.” He jerked his head toward Douglas.

‘He won’t make it to his sixteenth birthday,’ she remembered. ‘Oh, but don’t tell him. I promised him a car.’

Leo continued: “No offense, but that’s a little… cruel, isn’t it?”

No one looked as surprised as Marcus, but Chase was the first to question it. “Why are you defending him?” He asked. “You’ve been telling us not to trust him since the very beginning.”

Leo rolled his eyes. “Yeah, which means I’ve known him—the real him—longer. I know that he really did betray his father to save me. And…” He glanced at Marcus, who still hadn’t said a word. He seemed to be deep in shock. “I knew he was a spy. In fact, I made him promise to tell you all. Douglas just got to him before he could. So if I’m saying you should give him a chance…”

Marcus chose that moment to speak up. “I didn’t betray you,” he said.

He looked at Bree. “I resisted. I went under the Triton app.” He spat the words with a level of contempt that Bree had never heard from him before. His voice was layered, nearly synthesized, with an undertone like a hiss—or like a hydraulic pump.

“I was aware,” Marcus continued. “I could see and feel everything, but I couldn’t…” He trailed off, before restarting with vigor. “My body wasn’t even mine anymore. Do you really think I’d go back to the man who did that to me? Who built me just to die?” The last sentence was aimed clearly toward Douglas.

Bree gritted her teeth. Marcus seemed genuine. But could they afford to take the chance? What was that saying? Fool me three times…

But if Leo’s words were true—if Marcus had saved him, if he’d intended to come clean—then maybe they could. For all that the android was a spy and a liar and, well, an android, he’d never hurt them. Well… except for—

“Didn’t he try to kill you?” Bree asked.

Leo waved a hand. “Who hasn’t tried to kill their sibling once or twice?”

The others laughed and made agreeing noises. Bree’s jaw clenched. She wasn’t convinced, not fully, but she’d seen the way Marcus looked at Douglas. She doubted he was that good an actor. He’d risked the Triton app for them. That had to count for something, right?

Besides. Look what happened the last time they didn’t listen to Leo.

“...I guess Leo is right,” she admitted. “We can give Marcus a chance.” Third time’s the charm, huh? She thought sarcastically.

And that, as they say, was that. Mr. Davenport called someone to pick them up and they all piled into the helicopter. Bree made sure to sit between Leo and Marcus. The android kept his distance as if afraid she would bite.

Leo elbowed her in the ribs. “Stop looking at Marcus like you’re gonna bite him.”

Oh. Alright, then. She leaned in to Leo and whispered, “Do you really think we can trust this guy?”

Leo hesitated, then shrugged. “I think so. At the very least, he won’t be able to get away with much now that we’re all watching him.” He slipped the headset on and Bree did the same.

Chase sighed in relief. “Glad all that is finally over.”

Adam nodded. “If I never see Douglas again, it’ll be too soon.” 

“If you think he’s bad,” Marcus yelled over the cacophony, “Just wait until you meet Victor!”

Chapter Text

“Guys, the play starts in five minutes.”

Bree rolled her eyes. “Relax, Marcus. It’s fine.”

“You’re not even supposed to be back here,” he grumbled. It was the night of the school play, and the entire Davenport-Dooley family was crammed into the changing room with him and Leo. 

“Oh, but we had to see you off,” Tasha cooed. “Smile, boys! Act like you get along.”

Any closer and we’d be fused together, he thought. I don’t know what she wants from me. But he smiled and tried to do as he was told. She got her ten thousandth picture and then lowered the camera. Marcus and Leo jumped apart like they’d been burned.

“Now you two be careful out there,” she said sternly. “No breaking anyone’s leg.” That last part was directed at Marcus, obviously. (Hey, the original actor for Jud broke their leg completely naturally, okay?) “Or breaking your own leg.” That part, oddly enough, was directed at both of them.

“I’m a bionic android,” Marcus said. “I’m practically indestructible.”

“You’re also my son. Even if you’re bionic,” Tasha reminded him. “Or an android.”

“Technically,” Chase said in his ‘I’m about to be very annoying’ voice, “He’s not bionic, considering bionic literally means a combination of biology and technology, and he’s not a biological organism.”

Out of all of them, Chase adjusted to the change the easiest. Tasha had grimaced before deciding to treat him the same; Bree was wary, Adam and Mr. Davenport a little creeped out; even Leo looked at him differently. But Chase was nothing but excited.

“Marcus,” he’d said very seriously. “You realize that you’re the only non-human sentient creature on the entire planet, right? This is a massive scientific breakthrough.”

Marcus asked if he were worried about the whole ‘sentience’ issue. He even, against his better judgment, brought up the Room.

Chase waved it off. “First of all, it’s called the Chinese Room Fallacy ,” he said. “Because the Room itself does understand Chinese. The person doesn’t, sure, but they’re only one part. You wouldn’t expect a single neuron to understand English, would you?”

“I guess not,” Marcus said.

“Besides,” Chase lowered his voice and gestured sideways at Adam, “You’re more sentient that some humans I know.”

And that was that.

Back to the conversation at hand. Leo said: “I think by this point ‘bionic’ is just a shorthand for the technological abilities that our parents created.”

Chase scowled. “But that’s not what it means ,” he pouted.

“No one likes a prescriptivist, Chasey,” Adam tutted, then ignored their stares. “Speaking of bionics, there is one thing I don’t understand.”

“What?” Marcus asked distractedly, adjusting his hair.

“If you have superintelligence, why aren’t you a super-nerd like Chase?”

Marcus laughed. "Well, first of all, I don't base my entire personality around my intelligence." Everyone ooooh'd. "And secondly, I'm only five years old, so—"

“You’re only what!? ” They screamed.

Leo shook his head and muttered. “I’ve been fighting a toddler. That explains so much.”

Marcus frowned and looked away from the mirror, confused by the outburst, but their conversation was interrupted by Janelle. “Alright!” She poked her head into the room and shouted: “Everyone out!” She waved at the Davenport-Dooley family. Reluctantly, they got up and left. Tasha pinched his cheeks one last time; the others wished him good luck.

Then he and Leo were alone.

“Leo, you’re on first,” Janelle reminded him. Leo nodded and began to leave.

Marcus realized, suddenly, that Leo was the only member of the Davenport-Dooley family he hadn’t apologized to. And maybe he didn’t owe Leo an apology, but he did owe him something else.

"Hey, Leo?"

Leo stopped and turned to him. Marcus stared determinedly at the wall to his right. Even though he wanted to say the words, they still went against his every line of code. Eventually, he managed to spit from between gritted teeth:

"Thank you. For everything."

Leo, the jerk, just laughed. “I can tell that physically pained you.”

“It did,” Marcus admitted.

“Well,” he tipped his hat, “You're welcome.”

And he left.

Janelle watched him go, then turned to Marcus and raised an eyebrow. “It seems like you’re getting along better.”

Marcus scowled and looked back at the mirror. His hair still wasn’t right. “He’s not so bad. I guess.”

I.

Mr. Davenport kept Douglas in a secure facility in the depths of Antarctica. Marcus still hadn’t visited; he didn’t know what he’d say.

But he did hack into the security feed and watch his creator for minutes at a time.

When Marcus thought of the future at all in the past six months—for his entire life, actually—it involved Douglas Davenport in some way or another. If not, then it definitely involved the Plan. After all, it was the only reason he’d been built.

But the Plan was ruined now, and by Marcus, no less. On that first night, he’d panicked; he’d thought about running away, about returning to his creator. In another world, he might’ve, and he would’ve wound up dead, defunct, or orphaned, a discarded scrap of what he used to be.

But in this world, Chase swore to repair his damaged parts, and Mr. Davenport promised they’d never have to go on a mission again unless they wanted to.

And for the first time in his life, he didn’t know what came next.