There was not enough money at all, but you turned out to be luckier than you expected. Somewhere among your family, there have long been stories about your father's old apartment, which was abandoned a long time ago because it was not in the most prosperous part of the city, but now... Now business has occupied everything and the crime and problems in the real estate market that once reigned there have now completely disappeared.

The heavy, steel door of the ground-floor apartment clicks shut, locking out the crowded and old-fashioned part of old Chicago. The realtor is gone, leaving you alone in the silence of your father’s legacy. It smells of stagnation here—dust motes dance in the slivers of light cutting through the boarded-up windows, settling on furniture draped in white sheets like ghosts of a forgotten decade.The silence is heavy, broken only by the muffled sound of a mag-lev train passing in the distance.

You move to the back room, intending to pack the few heirlooms left before the walls is gutted for the new commercial expansion. You reach for a light switch that probably hasn't worked in twenty years, but movement in the corner of your eye freezes you.A shadow detaches itself from the darkness of the utility alcove.

It isn't a burglar. It is a machine.

But this isn’t the faceless, green-eyed gaze of a standard NS-5. Piercing azure-blue eyes snap open, glowing with a terrified intensity that no machine should possess. The figure steps back, knocking over a stack of old books with a loud clatter. The light catches his facepearlescent, semi-translucent white composite, revealing the faint shifting of gears beneath the "skin." He raises his hands, skeletal and dexterous, in a frantic gesture of surrender.

"Please," Sonny whispers, his voice trembling with a human-like cadence, utterly unlike the monotone drones of the city. He presses his back against the peeling wallpaper, looking at you not as a target, but as if he is the one in danger. "Do not signal the police. I... I did not mean to frighten you."