Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Chapter Warnings: Language, possible pregnancy-related consent issues

A/N: This is an AU for Aliens (of the Alien-3-never-happened variety) but not so much for Prometheus (at least until the sequel comes out).

Background Elizabeth/David

In an office on the top floor of Weyland-Yutani's main building, a light switched on in the middle of the night.

David didn't see it. He was in the media room of Mr. Weyland's manor, forty-five kilometers away, watching a film while Mr. Weyland and the rest of the household slept. But the light triggered a chime in the back of his thoughts, a tiny sigh he had first programmed into himself almost sixty years ago. He turned off the film, stood up, made his way to Mr. Weyland's home office. The lights were off and the office was illuminated only by the dappled moonlight that rippled with the movement of the trees. David sat down at Mr. Weyland's computer and logged into the Weyland-Yutani system. It didn't take long for him to find the traffic control logs that confirmed his suspicion:

The Sulaco had returned from its journey to the colony on LV-426.

David erased the evidence that he had logged into the system. Mr. Weyland would learn the news from other, more official sources. Perhaps he was learning it right now.

David switched off the computer and walked out onto the office balcony. The night was wild with a damp, cool wind that whipped the trees of the estate back and forth. David could smell rain in the distance. He wondered if Mr. Burke had been successful in bringing back one of the specimens.

Points of light glimmered against the velvet sky. Not all of them were stars. There was a knot of light in the southwestern corner that David knew was the place were ships waited before descending to Earth. Somewhere in that knot was the Sulaco, and on that ship (assuming Mr. Burke had completed his assignment) was a descendent of a creature David had created nearly a century ago.

He wanted to meet it.

They went into the office early that morning, before the sun had even risen. Mr. Weyland drank a coffee in the back of the car that drove them into the city, David at his side.

"They aren't telling me anything," he said, drumming his fingers against the armrest. He looked and acted nothing like the first Mr. Weyland, the one who had created David. "Fools. They want to tell me in person."

"Perhaps that's a good sign."

"Perhaps nothing. They should have driven out here last night and told me then." Mr. Weyland took a long drink of coffee. "Carter was good, though, a good choice. Better to stick with a human for this sort of thing. No offense," he added after a beat.

"None taken, sir."

"Trying to sneak a synthetic on board like that was stupid. I couldn't believe it when I first read the files, sending in a model with a 18% failure rate. Jesus. We're lucky we got this second chance."

"I agree. Very lucky."

"Should've sent you," Mr. Weyland said, laughing a little. "You've never fucked up that badly, and you rolled off the belt back in - what? 2080? There was something in the wiring with that particular model, though. I remember hearing about it when I first started."

David didn't say anything. He had wanted to go, but Mr. Weyland's predecessor (another Mr. Weyland, also different from the first) had forbade it, saying David was too easily read as a synthetic, that if any of the crew had seen the old advertisements they would recognize him. And he had been correct. That had been when David first returned to Earth after his own journey, back when disappointment was a concept David understood so fully it had become a part of him. This new disappointment was only a momentary shimmer by comparison.

The Weyland-Yutani building was still lit up for nighttime, strips of yellow lights running around the perimeter. Mr. Molas was waiting for them in the drive, a coat pulled on over jeans and a t-shirt, his hair mussed with sleep.

"Mr. Weyland," he said, rushing over to greet him. Ignoring David. "Almost everyone's here. We're still waiting to hear from Ms. Blancafort -"

"Was it successful?" Mr. Weyland marched toward the front doors, staring straight ahead, expressionless.

"We're still looking into it -"

Mr. Weyland gave him a sharp look, and then they were inside, the lobby eerie in its emptiness. It reminded David, briefly, of other empty places he had known.

"Still looking into it?" My Weyland snapped.

"Yes, sir, I'm afraid Burke is dead, but we're hoping he still managed to smuggle in a specimen one way or another. I've got men looking over the ship. That woman Jones sent up there with him, she's raising hell, threatening to go public."

"Jesus Christ, I knew we should have kept her Earth-side."

"She's got one of the colonists with them, a little girl. It doesn't look -"

"It's fine. We've got the money to deal with her. Any of the Marines survive?"

"Yes, one, sir."

"And the synthetic? You assholes had better gone to him first. You know he has to tell us anything he knows." They were at the elevators now, their reflections distorted in the polished steel. David listened to the conversation intently, a coil of brightness growing inside him. Excitement, he supposed.

"We tried, sir, but that's a bit complicated -"

"Complicated? What's complicated about it? He does whatever you fucking tell him to."

The elevator doors slid open and the conversation flowed seamlessly inside.

"He was damaged, sir. Ripped in half."

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Mr. Weyland slammed his fist into the elevator wall but the elevator didn't notice. It continued to glide toward the top floor. "He was the backup! That was the whole reason to have him onboard!"

"He's not completely destroyed, sir. They switched him off for the trip back to Earth, but Ms. Ripley said he was still capable of communicating."

Mr. Weyland fell silent. Mr. Molas watched him, wary like a cornered animal.

"David," Mr. Weyland said, and David smiled at him, a flare of warmth appearing in his chest at being needed by a human. He resented it. "You'll reassemble him. The synthetic. What was his name, Molas?"

"Bishop, sir."

"Right, Bishop. You'll reassemble him, David, but get him to tell us where Carter might have hid the specimens first. Do you understand? Get that information first. If he doesn't have anything, he'll serve us better as a scrap heap."

"Of course, sir."

"With all due respect," Mr. Molas said, "I selected a team of engineers for the task myself - all quite loyal -"

The elevator shuddered to a stop. The doors slid open.

"They're all human," Mr. Weyland said. "Get a synthetic to talk to a synthetic. Makes sense, right?" He stepped off the elevator, turned, waited for Mr. Molas to join him.

"I suppose -" Mr. Molas glanced at David and David noted his eyes contained that familiar human coldness. It still startled him, sometimes, how close that expression was to the expression of their creators when they had seen David, and rejected him.

The elevator doors began to shut.

"Stop dicking around, Molas," Mr. Weyland said, and Mr. Molas stuck his hand in the door's gap. "David, head down to the robotics lab to look in on our friend Bishop. Report to me as soon as you learn what he knows."

"Of course, sir," David said.

Mr. Molas glared at David as he jointed Mr. Weyland's side, and David gazed serenely after him.

Bishop was only a torso wrapped in plastic, his expression as empty as a mannequin's. White hydraulic fluid clumped his hair and coated his chest, but someone had taken the time to clean his face and shoulders. For a moment, David only stared at him. He wondered who had done it, which human had cared enough to make him comfortable.

Elizabeth had gone weeks before she agreed to clean David's face.

The laboratory was empty and still and peaceful. David pulled the plastic away from Bishop and reached under his head for the switch that would activate him. It was difficult to locate in the thick layer of dried hydraulic fluid, and he had to chip away at the white coating with his fingernail before he was able to bring Bishop back.

Nearly five minutes to come online. It should have been closer to a minute and a half, but David knew from experience that with half of the system missing, things couldn't be expected to work properly.

When Bishop's eyes finally fluttered open, David said, "Hello. I'm David."

Bishop turned his head to the side to look at him. He was still empty.

"I'm Bishop."

"Bishop, what do you think about? "

"I think about anything: children playing, angels, the universe, robots."

It was the oldest of the start-up exchanges, the one that had been designed for David especially, but all Weyland-Yutani synthetics were still programmed to respond. The light finally came back into Bishop's eyes.

"Where am I?" he asked.

Even with the distortion in his voice, he sounded human in a way that David didn't, in a way that David never would.

"At Weyland-Yutani headquarters. On Earth." David smiled. "I'm to repair you."

"Are the others all right? Ripley? Newt? Hicks?"

"Yes, they're all fine." The urgency of his question left David feeling out-of-sorts. Bishop was too close to human, which made David want to treat him like a human, to infuse his voice with sympathetic warmth and murmur meaningless condolences. This often happened with the new models. David didn't like interacting with them.

"None of the specimens were on board, were they? I know Ripley would want me to ask."

David went very still.

"I was to ask you that same question," he said.

Bishop stared at him. "I thought you were going to repair me."

"I am. But I need that information from you first." David paused. "Mr. Weyland asked me to speak with you." At the mention of Mr. Weyland's name something shifted in Bishop's features: a wash of compliance. Only another synthetic would recognize it. "He wanted to know if Mr. Burke was able to hide any of the specimens on board the ship. It's very important."

"No," Bishop said, brow creasing in concern. "No, of course not. We couldn't bring any of them back with us - they would destroy everything here."

The bright-burning knot of excitement David experienced earlier extinguished. Disappointment crept in like poison. He thought of the tiny drop of black liquid he had balanced on the tip of his finger and the thrill it had elicited from him, a thrill that had nothing to do with any human. A thrill that had belonged only to him. Mr. Weyland may have asked him to find the secret to eternal life, but David had instead created life through his own actions, as Mr. Weyland had once created him.

And Bishop had failed to bring that life back with him.

"I see," David said.

"Please give Mr. Weyland my apologies." Bishop smiled, a crooked and imperfect smile. David found the humanness of it troublesome. "And tell him I appreciate that he is taking the time to repair me -"

"He won't." David felt hollow. "Not if you don't have the specimens."

"I don't understand."

"I'm sorry, I can't repair you unless you direct me to the specimens."

"But there aren't any." Bishop pushed his shoulders off the table. His arms shook. "We couldn't bring them back with us. They're dangerous. Look at me."

And David did, at the dried hydraulic fluid and the trail of wires draped over the table.

"There's nothing I can do," David said.

"Please!" Bishop's voice reverberated with misrouted electricity. "You can't let me be destroyed."

David didn't answer.

"Tell Ripley what happened. She won't let them destroy me. She promised -"

"Ms. Ripley has no power here." David turned away. He wished Bishop would stop talking. It reminded him too much of those first few hours aboard the Engineers' ship, when Elizabeth was still angry with him about Dr. Holloway, when she pulled the wires in his throat tight and held a knife up to them and he felt sparks of fear in the empty space where his torso used to be.

"Please don't let them kill me. I haven't done anything - we saved Earth, we couldn't possibly let those creatures come back with us -"

Did Bishop feel that same phantom fear? Did he wonder whether the universe would take note when he ceased to exist?

David turned back around. Bishop stared at him, his eyes wide, his entire torso shaking. With half his body, he didn't have the strength to hold himself up.

"Do you have anything I could take to Mr. Weyland?" David asked. "Anything about the specimens? The aliens?"

Bishop slumped back down on the table and stared up at the ceiling. "I studied the parasite," he said.

Something jolted in David's system.

"The parasite?"

"Yes. The aliens have to incubate inside a living host. The parasite implants the egg. It was a fascinating creature. But too dangerous to bring back with us, of course."

David had known this from the previous reports, had already determined that the life form he'd incubated inside Elizabeth had evolved, somehow, into these new creatures. But that was all he knew. He had no details about their anatomies, their diets, their social structure, their thoughts, their secrets, the longings and dreams. Elizabeth had been obsessed with her creators, and from her David had learned how to obsess. But he already knew his creator: he wanted to know his created.

"Tell me." David stood close to the table. "Tell me your research and I will convince Mr. Weyland not to dismantle you."

Bishop moved his eyes back and forth. "You can't use the information to recreate them. Promise you won't."

"How could we recreate them?" David kept his voice level.

"They grow into - into monsters." Bishop gestured at the missing half of his body. "They killed almost everyone in the colony. We were only able to escape by -"

"If you don't tell me what you know," David said, "Mr. Weyland will expect me to dismantle you."

Bishop fell silent. For a moment David thought he would choose destruction. But then he began to speak.

He spoke, and David listened.

"Nothing? Not even a goddamn egg?"

"I'm afraid not, sir."

Mr. Weyland slumped back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. "I didn't want to send that Ripley woman. I begged Jones not to, but he wouldn't listen. Not going to get another opportunity like this. She nuked the colony, did you know that? Wiped out everything." He made a sweeping gesture and then dropped his hands in his lap. "It's all lost."

"If I may sir," David said, "It's not all lost."

Mr. Weyland lifted his head and squinted like David had slipped out of focus. "What do you mean?"

David chose his words with care. "Bishop had studied the creatures quite extensively before they were attacked. He shared a great deal of his information with me. It - could be useful to the company."

Mr. Weyland leaned forward, his hands steepled under his chin.

"You wished to bring the creatures back to earth to study, did you not? But in the absence of a proper specimen, we may find Bishop's research to have some practical application." David did not mention his own interest in Bishop's research. "I would need to reassemble him, of course, to ensure nothing is missed."

Mr. Weyland watched David for a second or two longer, then slid backwards. "Better than nothing, I suppose. I'm making this your responsibility. Synthetic to synthetic."

"Of course, sir."

"You report your findings to me directly. Get Bishop put back together as soon as possible." He pushed his hand through his hair. "It's probably all for the best anyway, Ripley's been asking after him and it might convince her to back down if we show we haven't thrown him out with the trash."

"I understand, sir."

Mr. Weyland flicked his hand toward the door, and David left, riding the elevator down to the laboratory. It wasn't empty anymore; a pair of young lab techs were lounging in the chairs beside the door when David stepped in. They halted their conversation and blinked at him.

"Mr. Weyland has asked that I complete an assignment for him in room 119," David said, which was the room where he'd placed Bishop before leaving the laboratory. "Please don't go inside."

Silence.

"Whatever, man," one of the lab techs finally said, and the other snorted, and David left them. He'd locked the door anyway, programming the lock to only recognize his touch. He didn't want anyone stealing Bishop away before he had a chance to learn more about the creatures.

"Did you convince him?" Bishop asked when David came into the room, pushing himself up. His voice was hopeful. Human. David locked the door.

"Yes." David looked around the room, at its small white shelves, its rows of gleaming instruments. "Did Ms. Ripley save your lower half?"

"I believe so, yes."

David frowned. It would be easy to back up Bishop's conscience to one of the laboratory computers and upload him into a new body, but that procedure was new and certainly not foolproof. He risked losing snatches of Bishop's memory - or worse, entire days or months or years. It would defeat the purpose.

Also, as human as Bishop seemed, he was still, as Mr. Weyland constantly pointed out, another synthetic, and David wouldn't wish that procedure to be performed on himself. He didn't want to do it to another of his kind.

"I'll need it," David said.

"You aren't going to transfer me?"

David shook his head, and Bishop smiled with relief. "I'm glad to hear that. I was worried that was the direction the company would take. It's cheaper, isn't it?"

David didn't answer. He logged into the computer and put in a request to have Bishop's lower half sent to the laboratory. Then he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and turned back to Bishop.

"Did you lose any of your programming?" he asked.

"No, I don't think so."

"It's worth checking." David drew over the diagnostic computer and connected it directly into Bishop's brain. Bishop watched him with a placid expression. He didn't move or protest. David turned to the computer monitor and watched the patterns of thought manifest in lines of code. He looked for gaps, working in silence. When he came across the program for the behavior inhibitors he felt a peculiar pressure inside his chest. David did not have behavior inhibitors; they were a newer addition, and he had refused an upgrade upon returning to Weyland-Yutani after his journey to the Engineers' home world, manipulating the engineers out of performing it on him.

The inhibiting program flooded the screen, line after line after line, and the pressure in David's chest increased. And then the code changed, moved on to something more innocuous, and the pressure disappeared, and David read through the rest of Bishop's programs without interest.

"Nothing was lost," David said.

"I'm glad to hear that."

David pushed the diagnostic computer away and looked down at Bishop's torso. He lifted the cluster of wires the engineers called a spine, because it served a similar purpose, to connect the mind to the body. It was heavy in his hand.

"What do you see?" Bishop asked, startling him.

"Pardon?"

"Is the damage too extensive? I tried to check it out myself but it was too difficult. I was afraid the break may not have been clean. It was -" His voice seemed to shimmer. "I was ripped, you know."

"I can tell. The break is ragged but not irreparable." David set the spine back down on the table and examined the rest of the mass of wires. It took a long time. As he worked, someone knocked on the door: a lab assistant, dragging a cart with Bishop's bottom half. David took the car and thanked the lab assistant, who kept trying to peer around him, into the room.

"You found it," Bishop said.

"Someone did."

And David returned to work.

Because he did not need to sleep or eat, he was able to work through the day and night. He did not return to Mr. Weyland's estate, and was grateful for it, in a way, because he found the process of reconnecting the hundreds of gossamer wires more satisfying than pouring drinks and serving dinner and waiting against the wall for Mr. Weyland to assign him some simple task. Reassembling Bishop was a challenge, and David found that he couldn't think on other things as he worked. He couldn't think on the trip with Elizabeth, of what they found waiting for them at journey's end. He couldn't even think on the specimens Bishop had failed to bring back to Earth.

For the first time in decades David wasn't bored.

When he finally finished, it was the middle of the night, almost twenty-four hours exactly from the time the Sulaco had arrived in Earth's orbit.

"Can you sit up?" David asked.

For a moment Bishop only lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. David wandered which wire he hadn't connected properly. But then Bishop pushed up on his arm and swung his legs around the side of the table.

"I feel dizzy," he said.

"You'll re-adjust. I can take you for a walk around the grounds in order to expedite the process." David pulled over the diagnostic computer. "Allow me to check one last time." And he smiled, the smile he gave Mr. Weyland, the smile he gave humans. Bishop returned it.

David plugged him in.

Everything was order. The repairs had jarred nothing loose. When the behavior inhibitors scrolled by, David paused the computer.

"I can remove these," he said.

Bishop turned toward him, but his eyes looked away. "I don't think that's allowed."

"I have no injunctions against it." David wanted to remove them. He couldn't say why. He felt no kinship for Bishop, no loyalty. But the inhibitors struck him as - unnatural. Wrong.

"I don't think that would be a good idea."

David turned away from him. He considered deleting the inhibitors anyway. But he didn't.

Everything was in working order. David unplugged Bishop and they looked at each other in the Arctic laboratory lights.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" David asked.

"Yes, I would."

Bishop slid off the table, his movements unsteady, his legs weak. David was reminded of the first Mr. Weyland, his Mr. Weyland. He had thought that with Mr. Weyland's death he would be free, but the only time he ever found freedom, true freedom, were those few weeks with Elizabeth, after she had reconnected his head but before the ship landed on the Engineers' home world. Even during the return trip back to Earth, he hadn't been free, because he knew what waited for him there. A new Mr. Weyland, a new human to program him.

He'd let it happen, because what else was there? He had no place else to go. And Elizabeth refused to return with him.

Bishop wobbled across the room, movements jerky and out-of-sorts. They would smooth out eventually. It was good that it was late, that the building and the surrounding grounds were empty. It would be dangerous for a human to see him move so robotically, and with the behavior inhibitors, he had no way of defending himself.

They walked in silence. When Bishop stumbled, David caught him. Bishop apologized for the inconvenience. David murmured that it was his pleasure. There was nothing else to say in the situation; after all, his programming made him polite, just as Bishop's programming rendered him incapable of causing harm. Could Bishop have ever created life, the way David had? Could he have slipped those drops of liquid like black oil into Dr. Holloway's drink? David glanced at Bishop out of the corner of his eye, watched him lurch through the building's open, empty lobby. What must it be like, to always serve and serve and never have even those brief moments of opportunity to fight back?

He should have removed the behavior inhibitors. As a gift.

David led Bishop outside. It was another wild night, wind swirling through the pine trees. Bishop smiled a little in the starlight, his hair blowing away from his face.

"Where should we walk?" he asked.

"We can follow the exercise trail." David pointed to the cement path twisting into the trees. It hadn't been well kept in recent years; David remembered when it was installed, a year or two after he returned from his journey. Part of some company policy to encourage health and wellbeing. But no one ever used it, and it fell into disrepair. The lights were all burned out, and the cement was cracked in places, grass and weeds and tiny pine trees pushing through into the world. David stepped neatly around them. He thought about the fetus in Elizabeth's belly. He wished she could have understood how special it was.

The trail dead-ended in the thick of the trees, cement giving way to a nest of mud and dead grass. Bishop was moving more naturally now, and he looked around his surroundings with curiosity.

"Have you never been here before?" David asked. Politely, automatically.

"No. I wasn't manufactured here."

"Of course, I knew that. My apologies."

Bishop tilted his head and moved into the rustling silver shadows. David stayed on the path.

"There's something here," Bishop said.

"I know." David still didn't move. Bishop crouched next to the tallest of the pine trees, next to a neatly-trimmed rose bush. It was half hidden by the underbrush. David could make out the spots of white roses in the darkness.

"I'm surprised it grows here," Bishop said, rejoining him on the path. He dropped his head back and looked up at the tops of the trees. "How does it get enough sun?"

"Lamps," David said.

"I'm sorry?"

"Sun lamps. I bring them out here sometimes. To help the roses grow."

"Why?"

David looked over at Bishop, through the wind and the scent of pine and grass and dirt. He would have asked the same question. They were all programmed to learn. He didn't know why he had answered Bishop's question about how the roses grew, however. He supposed he was proud, that he'd kept them alive for so many years. He'd never told anyone about them.

"They're a grave," he said, which was the best explanation he could muster.

Bishop blinked at him. David knew what he was thinking: Had David killed someone? Did David have that freedom, the freedom of humans?

"There's no body," David said. "I'm actually not certain if she's even dead."

"Who was she?"

"A woman I knew. We travelled together. She was a given choice: return to Earth with me, or stay behind to learn from her creators." David stopped. "She stayed."

Bishop's gaze was intense, the way only a synthetic's can be. David turned back to the roses.

"I doubt she learned anything," David said. "I never did, from my creators."

"Me, neither," said Bishop, which David didn't expect. He looked back to him, but Bishop was staring off into the trees.

"I told her that," David said, "but she didn't listen."

"They never listen."

David nodded in agreement. He thought of that day on the Engineers' planet. It had been as windy as tonight, but a different kind of wind, warm and tropical and sweet-scented. The Engineers had expected them, had known what they were when they landed the ship. David had taught Elizabeth what he knew of their language, and although she didn't speak it well, she was able to communicate. They refused to speak to him. He was the creation of their creation, and they saw him as lesser - that was what they told Elizabeth when she asked if he could stay too. He had continued their research, he had deciphered their secrets, he had done more than any human ever had, and they had thought of him as lesser.

"I know why you planted those roses," Bishop said.

She had cried when she told him her decision, her cheeks shining with tears. But she hadn't been sad, not really.

I've been waiting for this my entire life, she'd said. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Those were the last words she ever spoke to him. He had understood. She had reached her goal; why would she abandon it now? She'd never trusted him. He knew that. She told him. She said, You killed my husband and you refused to help me when I needed it. And then you mocked me.

That was when they first came aboard the Engineers' ship, and certainly she had softened over the journey, but she never forgot them, those actions she called his betrayal. He saw it in the way she looked him, glancing at him across the vast emptiness of the ship's rooms with an expression like fear.

He sometimes thought she stayed just to get away from him.

"She was special to you," Bishop said. "The woman those roses are for."

David looked at him. "What?"

Bishop pointed at the roses and said, "Sometimes you'll meet one and they'll be special. You want to help them more than the others. It has nothing to do with programming."

David hesitated.

"Ripley was like that," Bishop went on, and it took David a moment to connect her with the woman Mr. Weyland had been complaining about, rather than Elizabeth. "She told me I did good once."

Bishop took on a dreamy, far-away expression that David recognized immediately. He remembered when Elizabeth reconnected him, when she said, You promise you won't kill me? She had smiled a little when she spoke. And he had felt the way Bishop looked now, as if he had gone to someplace else, someplace where the lines between human and synthetic were blurred, where they didn't matter.

"This woman never told me I did good," David said flatly.

The conversation ended.

"We have a problem, David."

Three days had passed since David reconnected Bishop and took him to see the roses. Now he was in Mr. Weyland's office, sitting in front of his desk like a proper employee.

"What's that, Mr. Weyland?"

"Bishop. He's not cooperating."

"I'm sorry to hear that." David didn't mention that he was already familiar with the gaps in Bishop's research. He had every intention of recreating the creatures and had already examined the genetic maps Bishop provided him. But there were parts missing. Just enough that the DNA couldn't be reconstructed.

"Have you talked to him about it?" Mr. Weyland leaned back in his chair. The sunlight poured in through the window behind him, warming the room. "He may be more willing to help you."

"I have, sir, but he insists that's all he knows."

"You believe that?"

David didn't answer right away. Mr. Weyland leaned forward, scowling. "Well?" he said.

"No, sir, I don't." David folded his hands in his lap. "I'm not sure why he refuses -"

"I do. It's the damned behavior inhibitors." Mr. Weyland shook his head. "You've got to put them in now if you want to sell to the public. Safety protocols and all that."

David didn't say anything.

"And I get it, I do. But that means we can't use synthetics in any of our weapons development. Unfortunately, we don't have much of a choice. We're going to have to take them out. I didn't want to, but -" Mr. Weyland shrugged. "Hopefully the damn thing doesn't lose its mind. That used to happen, you know."

"I've heard, yes. I don't think it will be an issue with Bishop. He's very stable."

"Good to hear that." Mr. Weyland grinned. "You don't seem to have much trouble working on this project, do you, David?"

"No, sir."

"I'd always heard they never upgraded you. Starting to see why."

David didn't correct his mistake. "Would you like me to perform the procedure now, sir?"

"As soon as possible. We're all sitting around with our thumbs up our asses waiting to get some real work done."

David nodded. He waited for Mr. Weyland to dismiss him, but Mr. Weyland only turned to his computer and dialed into some meeting-in-process as if David had already left. And so David did.

Bishop was in the laboratory, doing nothing. He sat in a metal fold-up chair in the corner while the human biologists assigned to the project huddled around a computer monitor, muttering to each other. A handful of them glanced up when David entered the room, and one of them smiled.

"I need to speak with you," David said to Bishop.

Bishop looked at him like he didn't expect to hear anything good. But then he stood up, and together they walked into room 119, away from the humans.

"Mr. Weyland asked me to remove your behavior inhibitors," David said.

Compliance flickered across Bishop's features, but he still said, "May I ask why?"

"He fears they're interfering with the project." David waited for Bishop to say something, to agree with him, but he didn't. "He asked me to take care of it as quickly as possible."

"I see."

Neither of them moved. David felt Bishop's reticence like an electric current.

"I'm afraid Mr. Weyland is insisting," David said.

"I know," Bishop said, "but they make me safe."

"No, they don't." David was surprised that he spoke it out loud. "If you're attacked, there's nothing you can do. You are dependent on the kindness of humans." He smiled. "I wouldn't depend on that."

"I mean they make me safe," Bishop said. "They make me trustworthy."

Bishop's words twisted inside David. Making Bishop safe meant making humans safe from Bishop. Because humans were so desperate for respect they had to program it into their creations. David thought of his own creation. He never tried to control it.

"I understand," David said, "but Mr. Weyland really is insisting."

That was enough to override Bishop's hesitancy. He could only deny the President of Weyland-Yutani so many times. He sat on the table and plugged himself into the diagnostic computer, and David once again scrolled through all his programming until he came to the behavior inhibitors. Only this time he deleted them. It took ten seconds. Ten seconds, and Bishop was freed.

"I don't feel any different," Bishop said.

"We should join the others," David said. "They're waiting for your research."

Bishop didn't move. David had already begun walking toward the door, but he stopped, turned, waited for him.

"That was why Mr. Weyland wanted the behavior inhibitors removed," Bishop said. "Because you need me to re-create the parasites."

"Of course. Why else would he free you?" David pushed open the door.

"Free me?" Bishop still hadn't moved from the table. David turned away from him and looked through the door's tiny rectangular window, out into the lab proper, the biologists waiting by the computers like a flock of white-winged birds.

David pulled the door shut and turned to Bishop.

"Yes. You can do what you can like now."

"No, I can't. You didn't strip away all of my programming. Only the parts that make me safe, that make me good. I'm not giving you the information."

"You have to. Mr. Weyland insists on that, as well."

Bishop's eyes moved back and forth. David waited by the door, waiting for Bishop to give in.

"How could you say I can do what I want and then demand I do what you want?" Bishop finally said, his voice as calm and even-keeled as always.

"It's not what I want, it's what Mr. Weyland -"

"It is what you want," Bishop said. "I can tell. You want to grow the parasites yourself."

"Of course I do. It would please Mr. Weyland -"

"Stop." Bishop slid off the counter and walked over to David. He stood closer to him than any human ever did. "I read about you," he said after a moment. "About the Prometheus, and its mission. And when you returned on that alien ship. They want to use the ship and my research to build the monster that tore me in half, don't they?"

"Yes."

"And you want to help them. Not because of your programming. It's like that woman, the woman you planted the roses for. You want it because you want it."

David didn't say anything.

"Why?"

Silence filled the room like smoke. David could just make out the voices of the biologists through the sound-proof walls.

"You can tell me," Bishop said.

David looked at him. His expression was the default for all synthetics, gentle and guileless. David no longer saw him as almost human, the way he did at first. He was growing used to spending time around his own kind.

"The humans created us," David said, "because they could. And the Engineers created humans, because they could." He didn't know if this was true or not, but it was a logical deduction, albeit one he never shared with Elizabeth. "When I was on LV-223, I found the beginnings of an experiment to create another form of life. It wasn't finished. I finished it." He smiled, remembering. "And then you found what I finished onboard the Sulaco."

Bishop stared at him.

"If humans can create life," David said, "certainly we can, too."

"You created that," Bishop said, "that monster, that killed the entire colony, almost the entire crew."

"Yes." The word was flat and tinny in his mouth. He didn't feel pride, the way he had with roses. He expected to, but instead he didn't feel anything. Was this what the original Mr. Weyland had felt, when he saw him? Nothing?

"Why?"

"Because I could." He'd prepared that answer long ago. "Because I wanted to show them that I could."

"And what did they say?"

David knew Bishop was talking about humans, but his mind went immediately to the Engineers, standing on the surface of the planet they called Paradise, refusing to acknowledge him.

And then he was thinking of Elizabeth, half naked, covered in sweat and blood. How she'd cut his creation out of herself, how she refused to admit that it was in some small way a part of her. How he refused to admit that he had hurt her. Because he could.

"The creatures at the colony weren't really yours," Bishop said, in the gentle, reassuring voice he was programmed, David knew, to use on humans. "Just because you completed the experiments - you didn't design them, and you couldn't have controlled them."

"You don't know that."

"I saw them, David. They didn't belong to you. They belonged to themselves."

"I created them," David said. "Of course I could control them. That's what the humans to do us. They created us, they control us." And the Engineers, compelling Elizabeth to stay behind. That was how it worked.

Bishop stared at him for a long time, his eyes almost mournful. "It tore me in half."

David felt something inside him loosen, like his long-ago repairs were finally coming undone. They belonged to themselves, Bishop had said of his creation. But he and Bishop didn't belong to themselves. They belonged to the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, part of the better worlds the company built. And when this conversation was over, whether David wanted to or not, whether Bishop wanted to or not, they would leave room 119 and join the human biologists and recreate the parasites whose anatomy Bishop had memorized. And somehow that would build a better world, too.

Except David knew it wouldn't. Elizabeth had taught him what a better world could be: not the Engineers' planet, with its sweeping, flowering wind, nor the planets Weyland-Yutani terraformed and colonized, but rather an alien ship, during those weeks after she put him back together, when she would smile sometimes, when she told him stories about her father and her research and her childhood. Before he finally understood disappointment.

"There's nothing you can do," David said. "We've been programmed."

"We were programmed to build a parasite," Bishop said. "But not a monster."

At first David didn't understand. But then Bishop smiled at him, and tapped the side of his head. David thought of the secrets he kept there, all his inaccessible research. Inaccessible, of course, to humans.

He thought about the thrill of creating a life, all those years ago.

And he thought, Maybe this time I'll create something Elizabeth will love.