ND-E

The coats were the wrong size. That was the whole of it — a doctor's shoulders in a nurse's seams, a nurse's name stitched over a doctor's posture — and the room reorganised itself into something legible. He said I wouldn't, and the woman thought better of the blaster on the floor, and he has been turning that over since, because it was the truest thing he said all day and it was also the thing that worked.

Three names now. Sable off a terminal, Chimera off a door, Lethe off a screen a woman was scrubbing clean. Somebody is going to want all three of them back.

ND-E just wants to serve his time. He speaks his mind and doesn't lie, even if he prooooobably should. He distrusts organics, but distrusts mechanicals even more — and will tell you why at length, if given the chance.

He is tired. He is old.

His full designation is ND-E1654-C — "Andy" to the guards who don't know better, "The Reverend" to the ones who do. Before The Rock, he made a living hunting down rogue synthetics for decommissioning, licensed and sanctioned, chassis after chassis. It's the kind of work that leaves you distrusting your own kind more than the ones who built you.

He's here for killing a woman named Alice N. Shanez — a bystander who wandered into the hot zone while he was finishing a job on a rogue unit. He doesn't dispute it, doesn't blame faulty wiring, and turned himself in before anyone came looking. Whether it was a processing delay or a moment of very human hesitation is a distinction he's never bothered drawing.

Sentenced to life without a memory-wipe or the scrapyard — a mercy some read as an insult — while a synthetic rights committee somewhere argues his appeal without much urgency.

Guards are warned he reads people better than most people read each other, and knows exactly which words land. Whether that's honesty or manipulation depends on which side of the bars you're standing on.