“Liberation Experiment, Subject One Alpha.”

Charles felt his dream slipping away. Daylight from the window made the blood vessels in his eyelids visible. The Damn Cat had pulled open the shades again.

“Consciousness has successfully initialized.”

His shoulder and several vertebrae cracked when he stretched against the headboard.

“Neural chain nominal.That was only ligaments.”

Let the water run. One. Two. Three. Charles wiped a particularly large sleepy-cat out of the corner of his right eye while he waited on the shower to warm up.

“Make a note to make sure we are de-lubing the lacrimal contact points in the future.”

His face was a little scratchy but fuck it, stubble doesn’t matter on your day off. That guy at the coffee place probably likes it, anyway. I would murder for a fucking cinnamon roll right now.

“Got a little dopamine spike, there. I think our boy is making plans for the day.”

The inside of the elevator doors was a mirror. Charles fidgeted with his collar. Buttoned and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. Yeah. Leave just a little bit showing. Gotta be cool.

“Folks, we have left the building.” Applause erupted in the observation room. “Alright. Okay. Let’s see where we’re going.”

In other places people didn’t serve coffee anymore. Here though, here we still have actual human hands to touch when they give us the cup. That’s the kind of luxury that life in the Principality is about. Not the shiny buildings, not the clean air. We kept our humanity, that’s why we’re here. To just be humans, pure and simple.

“Starbucks! Kudos to our navigation engineers. No pathfinding errors at all.”

They didn’t have any cinnamon rolls. But he was there. Just a drink, then. Something with foam, make it extra sweet. Behind the counter his eyes shined along with his smile.

“Caffeine isn’t going to throw anything off, right?” “No, we’ll be fine.”

Convenient little door on the side of the counter, makes it easy to get back there. Charles watched the worker put a tiny pitcher of milk up around the steam wand.

“Hey, Gabriel.” That was his name, it said so on the tag on his uniform.

“GODDAMMIT! Get a cleaner in there, NOW! Put it back in a fucking box! Jesus Christ.” Dr. Jenner barked orders over the stunned silence in the room. “And for the love of God make sure we have containment on the police channels.”

The last people out of the coffee shop dodged around the stranger. The shine of his metallic orange shirt hit the mirrored glass of the doors like a sunrise. Gabriel’s screams redoubled at the sound of the gunshot. “Let him go, Charles.”

“He’s got chrome in his eyes. That’s not right, that’s the window to the soul. Shouldn’t be here if he doesn’t have a soul.” He reached to again pull the handle for steam on the espresso machine.

Gabriel wrenched his hair free from Charles’ mostly severed hand. He scrambled backwards on the floor, screams drowned by the bark of the gun.

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