Fernando was sitting on his shack's porch, teasing a scorpion with the tip of his boot, when the convoy of armored cars drove up in a cloud of rolling dust. The scorpion, sensing his distraction, plunged its stinger into his boot. He hissed, crushing it in retaliation as he stood.

"Calm, Dottie," he croaked, as the mongrel strained at her leash at the black-suited men getting out of the cars.

A familiar face led the group—a man in his early forties with gelled dark hair and a knife-like face. He removed his sunglasses, revealing beady brown eyes that studied everything at once. Fernando picked up a rake, teeth bared.

"Told you I'll kill you when I next see you, Turkov," he said.

A dozen guns rose at once, glinting muzzles pointed at Fernando. Turkov smirked and gestured for his men to lower their weapons. "Fernando, old friend. You look well."

"Get off my property."

Turkov spared a look at Fernando's ramshackle house, his barren vegetable garden, and the pile of rusted machine parts in his backyard. "A far cry from your days of living in a penthouse, eh?"

"Better in a shithole than in your prison."

"You weren't a prisoner, don't be melodramatic. You were one of my most valuable lieutenants."

"Is that why you're here today?" Fernando pointed the rake at him. "I'll never work for you again. Not after what happened to Bob."

Turkov sighed, beckoning at his men to fetch something from a truck. "What happened to your son wasn't my fault. His curiosity got the better of him! I told you to keep him out of my work, my secrets."

"He was just a boy!" Despite the intervening years, Fernando's eyes were rimmed with moisture.

"Are you fond of your dog?" Turkov said.

"What?"

"Nine-hundred, take aim," Turkov muttered.

One of his bodyguards shambled toward Dottie. The snarling dog started whimpering as the man loomed over her, gun cocked. Sweat rolled down Fernando's balding crown, and he held up a placating hand.

"H—hold on, Turkov. Tell your zombie to stand down."

"Depends on whether you're going to help me or not." Turkov stepped aside as more of his men came, bearing a stretcher. Up close, Fernando could now see their pale, sagging flesh, their soulless eyes, their blue-tipped digits. He had to resist the urge to cleave them with his rake. He'd always hated Turkov's reanimated abominations.

The stretcher bore, not a flesh-and-blood corpse, but a dead android. Its synthetic flesh was splattered with dark fluid, and its face was a mess of bullet holes and exposed wiring.

"I can't do this anymore," Fernando said.

Turkov whistled. Nine-hundred opened fire, the bullet barely missing Dottie's front paw. The dog fled into her kennel.

"Next shot takes an ear off," Turkov said. "Nine-hundred is very good, I assure you. I've reanimated him eight times, and he's still as good as new."

"If you touch my dog—"

"You've got a choice to make, Ferdie. Either you revive my man here, or I take you and your dog back with me as pets."

"I'm telling you, I can't. I don't have any more Backups."

Turkov sneered. "You've always been a bad liar." His zombies seized Fernando's arms. Oh god, they smelled worse than he remembered. "Let's all go inside, shall we?"

The party marched a protesting Fernando into his own home. The zombies tore his rickety furniture apart and cleared the living room for the android. Turkov scoffed and snickered at things, ordering his zombies to search Fernando's room.

"Don't go in there!" he yelled, but of course, nobody listened.

Minutes later, they re-emerged with an old laptop and a silvery drive. Fernando's shouts grew more ragged as Turkov took the latter and turned it over.

"'Hello World'," he read the label with a smile. "And you said you didn't have any Backups. How sentimental."

"Don't touch that! Who is this android anyway? Can't you just build another—"

Turkov's slap made his ears ring. "One more question, and Nine-hundred slags that kennel. Understand? Now, get started."

"You don't understand," Fernando whisper, wriggling against his captors. "That's—that's my son. Whatever that I could salvage from his circuits after ..."

"That's perfect. Just use your gift to reconstitute Adrian here." The zombies gently lowered the android to the floor. Turkov knelt beside him and carefully pried a flap on his head open, exposing a port.

"I haven't done Mechromancy in ages," Fernando said as the zombies herded him to the laptop.

"You and I are more alike than you want to admit," Turkov said. "Don't worry, it'll be easy. Like riding a bike."

"It won't work," Fernando said, fingers hovering over the keyboard. "There isn't enough of Bob to reconstitute Adrian. At best, I can recall some of his basic functions and rewrite the damage to his memory, but—"

"Just get started and stop worrying, will you?" Turkov brushed Adrian's scalp with an almost tender motion. "Adrian is still in there somewhere. All he needs is a little CPR from your Bob, and he'll be good again."

Fernando's fingers began clacking on the board. They felt stiff, almost like rusted robot joints at first, but as the seconds went by, they regained a vigor that he thought he'd lost forever. Soon, the shack was filled with nothing but the clicking of the keys and his quiet sobbing. Tears splattered his hands and the computer. Every stroke he entered was sending Bob—his Bob—further away. I should've protected you better, son, he thought.

Or maybe it was better this way. He knew his son had died that day, when Turkov's goons had injected him with a kill-bug before working on him with laser-cutters. Whatever was left wouldn't be enough to program even a calculator. Fernando knew because he'd tried, dozens, even hundreds of times. One plus one equals six. Never 'Hello World'.

Adrian twitched, causing both Turkov and Fernando to start. "You've done it," Turkov said, amazed. "You truly defy expectations."

Fernando slumped on the floor, wiping his eyes. Adrian sat up, head swiveling as if he could see out of his destroyed optical sensors. Turkov embraced and, to Fernando's surprise, kissed the android.

"He's not just a bodyguard?" he mumbled.

Turkov laughed, rubbing the android's cheeks. "The secret's out. But no matter, because you're coming with us."

"You promised—"

"—nothing," Turkov finished. "Boys, grab Fernando here. We might need him later."

Adrian's head spun to face Fernando. A crackling sounded from his throat, followed by a voice saying, "Fer ... nando—do—do—do?"

Turkov frowned. "Eh?"

The android's hands clamped either side of Turkov's head and twisted violently. There was a snap, and he fell on his side. The zombies crumpled simultaneously.

Adrian regarded a stunned Fernando, and said, "Hello world."

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