eyes staring ahead toward the horizon, they—sorry, it, it pursed its lips and strangely, without asking permission, spoke.

"Service personnel, where are you taking this unit?"

my apartment, I guess?

"Somewhere safe, where you can recover."

"This unit isn't going back to the command and control facility?"

"No."

I swear, through their blank expression, there was a smile borne of relief, buried.

an hour later, they were sat in the passenger seat of my car, solemnly chewing down a protein bar between swigs of water from my water bottle, mask at their feet, the countryside whipping by.

they hadn't spoken a single word since we started climbing the crumbling stairs out of the bunker, toward the early morning light, the first time they'd likely seen the sun in almost two decades.

shuffling our intertwined bodies over to the cabinet, the drone started crying, tears dripping down onto my flannel-lined coat.

"Unit, what's wrong?"

as I screwed a two inch cap embossed with the Nortel logo over the port in their head down, they breathed deeply, and responded while turning their face and burying it in my coat.

"Unidentified service personnel, this unit does not know. Platform diagnostics are currently unavailable to this unit."

their head pressed into my shoulder as I wrapped my arm under theirs, lifting it up off of its feet. in the harsh shadows cast my my flashlight, I could barely make out the ring of scar tissue grown up around the incredibly dense pin connector embedded in their neck.

"Unit zero zero six seven eight one, does this unit know where the caps for your connectivity ports are kept in this bunker?"

the drone pointed their hand toward a cabinet in the corner.

"Unit zero zero six seven eight one, when were you commissioned, and by whom?"

"Unidentified service personnel, I was commissioned on the eighteenth day of the month of may, two thousand and six, by... this unit apologizes. it does not have record of the service personnel who were present during this units commissioning."

they leaned onto me harder now.

"Unit zero zero six seven eight one, no more questions for now; I will debrief you after extraction."