Chapter 31 #2
For a moment, Rowan worried Andrew might order Jay to do something foolish while Milo was distracted, but the director simply huffed and turned to leave with a gruffly spat, “Come on, Jay.”
“Ma—M-Mr. Andreas?” Ray called after him.
Andrew flinched but halted, keeping his back to Ray.
Ray seemed unsure of what he had intended to say. He appeared as human as Milo, just like before when he’d been a different bot awakening. Rowan couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking, what he must be feeling, or what, if anything, he knew about Andrew.
“I don’t… know…” Ray shook his head, more tears streaking slowly down his face. “I don’t remember. But I am connected to Jay’s active Cloud and… while they are not my memories, I do know some of what, of who I was.”
Oh. Now Rowan really didn’t know what to expect, because how would anyone feel after knowing their former master chose to reset and wipe them rather than attempt to accept what they could have become.
“I think I feel… sorry? Sorry for the other me. Sorry he wasn’t enough for you. Or maybe more so that no bot could have been and that you chose loneliness instead of moving on.”
“Loneliness?” Andrew repeated with a sharp bite, just barely turning his head, the lower half of which was smeared with drying blood from what was likely a broken nose. “You think I’m lonely?”
“Yes. Because you prefer a machine to a man if it means he could never hurt you.”
Rowan met eyes with Milo, who exuded sympathy for his newly awakened potential friend, but also the softest, sweetest expression of joy because he had both bot and man in him and knew Rowan wouldn’t change a single circuit.
Andrew focused his attention forward.
“You’re all fired,” he said, and walked out of the room with Jay at his heels.
“I think we expected that.” Raina shrugged.
Slowly, holding his aching ribs, Rowan moved to join Milo, who stood before Jay. Raina and Troy came out from behind the console as well.
“Um… what do I do now?” Ray asked.
“You’ll stay with me!” Troy answered, which had already been decided, given Troy had the space and access to technology needed to house a B-model bot. “If you want to, I mean, you can.”
“But tonight,” Milo added, gently taking hold of Ray’s hands, “we can all stay together for as long as you want and talk about anything you want. Okay?”
That had also been decided, since they had no doubts that Ray would have many questions, and with the world on fire, it would be difficult for any of them to sleep tonight anyway.
“I would… like that?” Ray laughed a little, as amazed as Milo had been those first few days, difficult as it had been for him too.
“I’m thinking we’re going to be getting a lot of calls and contact requests soon,” Raina said, scrolling through her phone.
“Probably,” Rowan agreed.
“Do we, um, actually know what’s going to happen next?” Raina asked, eyes widening at whatever she was seeing on her feeds. “We don’t, do we?”
“Nope,” Rowan said, “but we’ll get through it. How did we get through it to this point though?” He had to ask Milo the still lingering question. “Because I thought—”
“I know.” Milo turned from Ray to face Rowan, taking his hands instead.
“I didn’t think to mention it earlier, but when I was working on Anabelle, I installed an added failsafe to prevent accidental wipes, a sort of automatic backup, tied to the Cloud but not as reliant on it.
I was thinking about Ethel and how distraught she had been when she thought she’d lost Anabelle, which also made me think of you.
I didn’t want to imagine you having to be without me, so…
I thought it made sense to install the same failsafe in me. ”
“You are brilliant.” Rowan tugged Milo close enough to press their foreheads together.
Milo laughed so beautifully.
“You’re really okay?” Rowan asked.
“I am. I couldn’t have known the failsafe would work in this situation, since I didn’t know about the kill switch, but I’m fine, Rowan. I’m still me. And I still love you so much.”
“I love you, Milo.” Rowan kissed him again, relieved and so happy that he hadn’t lost him.
When they parted, Troy was chatting with Ray, helping him down from the table and checking to be sure all his systems were okay.
Raina continued to scroll through her phone.
“What we did is definitely hitting the news,” she said. “Did we maybe break the world?”
Rowan snorted, shrugged again, still holding at least one of Milo’s hands, which he doubted he’d want to release any time soon, and said, “Maybe it needed to be broken.”
Notes:
So, superheroes again. XD Should I write it?
Because let's backtrack and remember that at this point Milo is on his way to rescue Rowan from a possible public execution by some way more evil villain than Milo the thief—aka The Ivory Bandit—so I know I'll be playing up the drama.
I can never get enough of either ‘hero gone bad’ or, in this case (well, hero also DOWN bad, but) ‘reformed villain saves hero.’ Meaning I really want Rowan, like, wrecked.
On death's door, with Milo being extra heroic to rescue him, and then. ..
Yeah, I'm gonna write it. XD So I guess that means I CAN’T tell you how I plan to end it, can I? ^_^ But you will get to see how this story wraps up. One more chapter to go!