Press was hard to avoid, Tenma thought crossly. Especially for someone like him. He'd had to register his medical files under an alias of Nicholas Coppola to avoid this getting into the hands of anyone who'd spread the word. He already had multiple news reporters hounding after some tidbit of information. Some wanted to know the extent of his injuries. He'd told them it was minor. Some wanted to know the cause. He'd lied. Some wanted to know where the absent Astro was. Tenma gave no comment.

Of course, he'd had to tell Elefun his answers, who'd told the press for him. Tenma was in no shape to face the press himself, unless he wanted to throw even more meat to the wolves.

One reporter had asked a question that really made Tenma's blood run cold. He'd asked where Tenma's son Toby was, and why Astro, Tenma's robotic creation, looked so similar to Toby. This question had been asked before, and no one had ever really taken this question seriously, but Tenma's heart always sped up when it was asked. Because according to the world, Toby was not dead.

In the end, though, he really wondered how long he could keep his secrets.

Somehow, Cora didn't think she should have the right to be going to school like any other girl after what happened last night. With all that panic, all the mysteriousness and intrigue and danger and that damn robot, it felt just…unnatural.

Life moved on. Life continued to flow at its normal pace, people still going around on their daily routines and dogs barking and gardenbots watering their plants and other robots regulating traffic and cars honking. It was all so normal, and it felt like a sort of crime. Cora had had this feeling once before—when she'd left the other orphans and rejoined her family to resume her Metro City life. Everything went back to normal, as if nothing had ever happened, leaving the her to question if it had even happened, if Hamegg, Zog, Zane, Widget, and Sludge had even existed.

Walking out of her last class at three, she kept her head down and moved as quickly as she could to N3vva, who was waiting by the car to take her home from school. Her thoughts were everywhere but where she was going, thinking of Astro and the freakish non-Astro and the previous night and the light—that sickly green light that Cora's mind told her was a harmless malfunction and her heart told her was everything but. And the voice in her head wouldn't shut up, laughing about how she was becoming so obsessed with the boy she'd convinced herself was just a hunk of microchips, and she almost didn't want it to shut up, because what if it was right?

"Oof!"

Silicon data tablets bounced on the pavement and Cora's head snapped up to see a middle-aged man with a white, bushy mustache. She remembered his face from around the campsite and knew he was a teacher, but never bothered to know his name or what he taught. Glancing down at the tablets he'd dropped, she saw several electronic data papers displaying advanced maths that Cora had never even seen before, a data table that looked like a grade sheet, and another list with large, clearly visible print on it. The words, "Class Roster" was visible on that one, with the words "Teacher: Higeoyaji" in typed print and the words "Mustachio" below the "Higeoyaji," looking like it had been scribbled on with an electronic stylus.

Surprisingly, when the papers fell, the teacher let out a loud "Dammit!" and dropped to his knees, picking up his fallen tablets. Cora raised her eyebrows, amused at the language. "So rude," he muttered, "so rude these kids are nowadays…"

Oh, Cora thought irritably, he's talking about me. "Well, gee," Cora shot back. "I was going to say sorry, but I make it a policy to not associate myself with asshats."

"Thank you for proving my point," the teacher growled.

"Look, don't get your panties in a twist." Cora bent down and picked up the Class Roster tablet, holding it out for him to take. "Here. It's not like they're broken."

But the second the teacher's fingers clasped over the tablet, she looked down at the Class Roster again and saw twenty or so little faces of children around twelve or thirteen, but of all faces she happened to see, her eyes happened to land at one near the bottom. And her eyes told her who it was, but her brain told her that it wasn't possible.

The teacher tugged, but Cora's fingers had locked on the tablet and wasn't letting go anytime soon. "Hey," the teacher said, irritable. "Let go!"

Eyes narrowed, Cora said slowly, "That… That student…"

The tablet was ripped from her grip, however, and the teacher stuffed it back into his arms and out of sight. "Gotta go," he sniffed, and waddled away.

"H-Hey—!" Cora yelled after him. "Don't you walk away from me! I—"

A shrill beeping noise interrupted her, and Cora spun around to see N3vva waving from the car, still quite a ways off, slightly impatient. One of her plasma-display eyebrows lifted, and Cora remembered what was waiting at home. If she didn't get home now, her parents would be even more ticked at her than they already were. They'd probably grill her, too. The face she'd seen on the class roster slipping her mind, she yelled, "Alright, alright, I'm coming!" and hurried to the car.

Coincidence, she told herself. Coincidence and an overreactive imagination.

When she got home at the end of the day, her parents still acted a bit too stiff to be completely over Cora slipping out of the house yesterday, but she didn't mind. She simply holed herself up in her room and busted out the homework, ready to lose herself in it and its criminal normalness.

"Master Cora?"

"It's Cora, N3vva," she replied without looking up from her math. "Just Cora."

"Cora, then," N3vva said slowly, "I was wondering…"

"Why do you want to know?" Her voice was a bit more curt than she'd intended.

N3vva stood thoughtfully in the doorway, and if she had lips, N3vva probably would be biting it. "I was wondering…"

…What you were doing at the Ministry of Science.

"Yes, N3vva?"

Picking up that this was unwanted territory—and not just the normal "piss off, I'm an angsty teenager" kind, the serious kind—N3vva smiled ruefully. Cora watched N3vva back away, holding out her hands in defeat.

"So I was wondering if you'd like some orange juice."

"…Yeah. that'd be great, N3vva," Cora sighed.

Three days later, Cora was upstairs, texting a friend when she heard the doorbell ring and N3vva answer with, "Oh! Oh, my! Uh…Dr. Tenma, sir! Such a… Such a pleasure to meet you, uh, sir!" All robots knew their creator, Cora thought, as she shot up off her bed and stumbled downstairs. N3vva zipped out of the way and mumbled something about getting tea, obviously flustered at meeting the Dr. Tenma, and as N3vva moved out of the way, Tenma stepped through the door.

There wasn't much that told Cora that four days ago, Tenma had been hazardously close to a violent explosion. There was only a long, paper-thin scar that went right down the hollowed left cheek of a tired face and the faint burn on his right temple, and neither were particularly noticeable. Cora smiled at him, not because she was glad to see him, per se, but because she was glad to see him generally unharmed.

"Cora," he said warmly when he saw her with her relieved smile. "Pleasure to see you."

The smile fell right off her face as she remember exactly why she was relieved to see him unharmed: it was because of an explosion, which had happened because of… "Where's Astro?" Cora demanded. Screw 'pleasure to see you.'

"First, may I come in?"

"After you tell me—"

"Thank you for your hospitality," Tenma replied with uncharacteristic determination and walked right by her, shrugging his coat off as he went and throwing it on the coathanger. Cora nearly protested, was even opening her mouth to do so, when she stopped cold, eyes widening, and suppressed a gag that made a faint choking noise in the back of her throat. She could only watched as he made his way to the end of the hallway, where Tenma turned and lifted one, thin arm to point to his left. "Is the living room this way?"

The fluorescent lightbulbs drew vivid shadows under the scars spiderwebbed over his hands and forearms, stretching his skin into grotesque, writhing 3D tattoos. They seemed to travel like knotted wood up his arms to disappear under the sleeves rolled up and pinned above his elbows, twisting flesh and Cora's stomach. Tenma's eyes met Cora's wide ones, and he smiled again.

"Really, Cora. Is the living room this way?"

Swallowing hard, Cora nodded shakily.

Tenma nodded and ducked through the door to the living room. After staring dazedly at the coat, hanging almost innocently, Cora hurried down to the living room after him.

She found N3vva placing a cup of tea in front of Tenma, who was seated casually on the couch, and N3vva smiled shyly when he thanked her with his usual tepid politeness. Seating herself on the couch opposite him, she waited until N3vva had wheeled through the door to the kitchen before lacing her fingers together and staring him dead in the eye with steely determination. "Alright. Answers. Now."

"Yes, answers now," agreed Tenma, hooking his bony fingers through the handle of the cup and lifting it to his lips. Cora couldn't help but stare at the way the scars wrapped tightly through his skin rippled as he moved.

"What is that?"

Tenma took a sip, eyebrows pulling together slightly with faint confusion. "What is what?"

"Stop beating around the bush, Dr. Tenma. I thought you said answers now?"

"I cannot give clear answers to unclear questions, Cora."

Cora gave a wry smirk. "Alright. What's with the scars?"

He took another sip from the cup before holding it out a good two feet in front of his eyes, appraising the scars on his fingers. "Ah…yes. I was burned a little in the explosion." Before Cora could ask further, Tenma added, "I'm quite surprised, Cora, that your first question wasn't about Astro."

"Oh…" Cora looked away, giving a dry glare to the nearby potted plant. "I was a little distracted by your new ability to fit in with the mafia."

"Funny," remarked Tenma as if he were making a scientific observation, and Cora had no idea if he was being sarcastic, or if he was simply unable to properly express anything other than his somber demeanor.

"So what is up with Astro? What happened?" demanded Cora.

Tenma didn't move for a long time, simply staring at the tea in his hands with a blank expression, before placing it on the saucer and staring at it some more.

Cora felt slight dread growing in her stomach. Eyes narrowing, she leaned forward. "What?"

Looking down, Tenma mumbled something.

"What is it?" Cora snapped.

"He's…gone."

"Gone?" Cora stared at him in more confusion than anger. "Whaddaya mean, gone? Do you… Do you mean he was dest—"

"There was no sign of him after the explosion," Tenma said softly. "No, he can't have been destroyed. His only structural weakness is his left shoulder, which tends to dislocate with a shamefully low amount of force, so the joint there is a problem; but the arm itself would take a PeaceKeeper and a half to actually crush. So he can't have been destroyed; I designed him better than to break from a bit of fire like that."

"A bit of fire?" Cora repeated disbelievingly.

Tenma bobbed his head noncommittally. Gee, Cora thought, great feats of physics like this aren't even important enough to him to be modest about.

"So you're telling me," said Cora, "that he ran away after the explosion and he's out there somewhere in Metro City." She looked down, lips pursed. "Why would he run? Why was he down there to begin with? What's he after?"

"It's…a little more complicated than that," admitted Tenma.

"How so?"

"Astro's not in Metro City at all."

HE'S A ROBOT

Zane scratched his head and wrinkled his button nose, then ultimately chuckled at the words. It had taken him years of lessons, months of studying, weeks of frustration, days of practicing, and hours to put it all together and decipher the message still etched into the dirt after all this time, but now he knew what Trash Can had been trying to tell him.

Astro was a robot.

Well, no fricken duh.

But there were things beyond that. The Four—Cora, Widget, Sludge, and himself—had all been a tight circle before Astro had shown up, a circle of siblings not of blood, but of bond, and that family had extended to every other orphan in the Hamegg House. However, as close as they were, behind their cheerful smiles and playful teasing, there were dark secrets lurking in everyone's pasts.

And Zane knew every one of them. He was the keeper of the secrets. Even if they hadn't given him permission to know, or even if they didn't know he knew in the first place, he found them all out and clutched them to his chest as tightly as he could and never spoke of them again.

Cora was from Metro City. Zane knew. Zane had always known. Of course he had. What did it matter? It wasn't the worst secret out there.

Thewlyn had accidentally thrown her dog into an incinerator.

Eugenides once threatened a girl with a knife and got transferred six times before he hijacked a transport shuttle to the Surface.

Acela broke all the windows in her school before throwing herself off of Metro City, and whether or not she had intended to survive the fall was debatable.

Mido tinkered with his robutler until he'd unintentionally programmed it to such a confused state it had set his neighborhood—and most of his neighbors—on fire.

Grace's brother shot robots for fun before accidentally getting hooked on a wacked-out drug, and afterwards began shooting Grace for fun.

And Widget's and Sludge's mother had been run over by their father and his pick-up truck so violently her face had been ripped off, and the father had banished them from Metro City before committing suicide.

What could he say? They were orphans. They all had their secrets. It wasn't like Zane had tried to find them out—it'd just happened. Honestly, Zane had felt that they should all be entitled to their own secrets. So when Astro had come around, he'd expected Astro to have his own skeletons in the closet, and Astro hadn't disappointed. Granted, his was undoubtedly the strangest one yet. Zane had heard traumatic and bloody stories, but never one that had lacked trauma and blood to be replaced with calculating, unfeeling electronics and whirring hardware. It had surprised him a bit.

But now it had all made sense.

"It didn't lack blood," he muttered to Trash Can, who waited obediently at his heel. "It simply lacked a reliable narrator and a body to show."

Trash Can barked, and Zane knelt to scratch behind his ear. "Funny, huh? he asked cheerfully. "It's all so crazy. But not that you'd know."

Before Trash Can could reply with another yelp, the transceiver plugged into Zane's left ear crackled to life. "Y_BOT H6 requesting permission to purchase two kilograms of Niobium; over," said a voice.

Zane pressed a finger to the button of the transceiver. "Send them to House Four."

"Copy that."

Zane nodded absentmindedly to himself, unfocused eyes staring at the hollow place where Zog had been, pressing another button on the earpiece as he did. "House Four? Do you read me?"

Buzzing, popping static, then: "Y_BOT H4; over."

"A seller'll be coming your way from House Six sometime today. They might offer two kilograms of Niobium, but only get it if they're offering two kilograms for the price of one. If not, just get one; we need hardly any Niobium. Even if we bust a hundred more times, we'd still have more to spare with just a kilogram."

"Copy that."

The line died, and Zane stood, staring at the words HE'S A ROBOT with the arrow pointing to the empty space where Astro had stood with a blank expression. Then, with a slight rolling of the eyes and a smile, he turned away and walked back up the path.

What could have been a peaceful walk through the paths of the Surface was interrupted by the connection opening up again, and a voice saying, "Y_BOT H2 speaking. We have a visitor for you; over."

"A regular?"

"Negative."

Maybe he should get an actual human to make the transceiver calls, Zane thought dryly. Their robots were just a little bit too formal and boring about their jobs for Zane's taste. "Description?"

"Gender: male. Age: thirteen. Height: approximately five feet, maybe less. Species: unidentified. Weight—"

"Wait—how can you not know his species?"

The robot's voice on the other end faltered for a moment. "Er, readers indicate mechanical activity, but sensory input from visual mechanisms show a figure incongruent with any known robot model. In fact, it matches the schema of a human male. And there's an unidentified energy mass that does not correspond with any known type, human or robot."

Zane realized his feet had stopped walking, and that his lips had twisted upwards. "Is he there? Like, right in front of you?"

"Affirmative."

"Ask him his name."

There was a long length of static, and Zane waited patiently in the muggy Surface heat. Trash Can pranced circles around his feet, wondering why Zane wasn't moving, but Zane ignored him. Come back, he pleaded, come back and tell me his name already! When the static finally cut off, Zane could have danced with glee. "Well?" he demanded.

"Name: Astro Tenma."

Zane smiled.

"Tell him something for me."

"Yes?"

"I'm looking forward to future business with him."

And the line went dead.