A chill wind, heavy with the scent of decaying plant matter, buffeted my bot’s skin. His sneakers were laced too tight, his cargo pants loose in some places and strangely snug in others. His jacket had a startling heft, and he was tall—there was so impossibly much of him.

I clenched the bot’s hand without thinking, unfamiliar fingers digging into his palm, the pain registering in my own.

Gasping, I cast away the controller to go tumbling end-over-end across the carpet. It was like I had two bodies, one feeding me touch and scent data as if I was at the warehouse—and one body still inside, staring at the TV. My head swam as I sorted out which was which. “Oh my God. What the hell is this?”

“This is BrainLink.” Mom’s lips twitched up. “It’s a little disturbing at first. With practice, you can control the bot much more naturally. But more importantly, now you can get to the skylight.”

This was how Garrett controlled his bot. How he was able to move so fluidly, like a real person. Holy. Crap. “Why does this do all the senses except vision?”

Mom shifted her weight. “Earlier versions did. But there were … issues. Overheating, and I’m not talking about the console. Really not pretty. So vision is disabled. The image on screen is just a projection based on your bot’s camera data, so don’t go getting cocky. Pain from BrainLinked bots feels real—part of the trade-off for increased control.”

I gulped. “What do you mean, real?”

“I mean I know pilots with debilitating PTSD from BrainLink incidents. We wouldn’t be taking this risk if we thought you’d … if there were other options.”

My fingers stiffened. There it was again. Mom treating me like a child.

Matt spun his bot around in one fluid motion while still crouched on the carpet, focused on the screen like he was playing any old video game.

“He’s not pressing any buttons.” My voice creaked.

“You shouldn’t need controllers anymore,” Mom said.

My bot gaped on screen. I snapped its jaw shut without thinking—and without touching the controller. Jesus. This wasn’t possible.

“Well, if we’re not doing this together …” Matt’s bot sprinted at the wall and leapt, somehow pushing off the metal and launching at the ladder. Then he grabbed onto the bottom rung, swinging, and pulled himself up until he was supported by his armpits, his stubby legs dangling in the breeze.

“Oh no you don’t.” Like Matt’s bot, mine stayed silent when I spoke. But I felt like I could make him talk, like I had to be careful about which body I moved. Before I realized what I was doing, I willed my bot to explode into a jump, its fingers sinking into the legs of Matt’s redhead. Then I muscled up, climbing him hand-over-hand. It all felt so … natural. I thought and the bot responded, the disorienting sensation of two bodies already fading.

“Hey!” Matt’s bot squirmed under my grip.

Just as he shook me off, I latched onto the ladder and strained to strong-arm my bot up, my own biceps somehow quivering from the effort. Matt scrambled up ahead of me and the two of us raced toward the roof. One false move on Matt’s part, and we’d both go tumbling to the pavement below.

Mom had a hand to her mouth. “Careful!”

Matt folded his bot over the roofline, vanishing from view.

I hustled after him, the wind rustling my bot’s jacket. When I pulled myself onto the steep roof, the metal cold under my bot’s giant fingers, Matt was already crouched beside a domed skylight near the top.

His bot offered mine a hand. “Last chance. Are you ready to team up?”

I dug my fingers into the carpet. I’d never been great with heights, but I wasn’t about to give Matt the satisfaction of winning at whatever mind games he was playing. So with pulse thrumming, I shimmied my bot up the roof on hands and knees.

But just as I reached Matt, the skylight gleamed with light from inside the building.

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Mom stiffened.

My pulse revved. Shit. Otokotronics was already here.

“Okay,” she said with a quiet urgency. “I need you to get your bots into secure positions on the roof so I can power this down.”

“But then won’t Otokotronics get the Talisman?” I asked.

She gave me a sharp look. “You’re not equipped to handle them, and neither are your bots. We don’t even know if it’s here.”

“You or Laramee can take control!”

“We’re not compatible with these bots. Please, if there’s ever a time for you to listen, Ko, this is it.”

Matt looked stricken as he eased his bot to lie belly-down on the roof.

What use were the bots if we didn’t use them? This could be our only chance for the Talisman. I craned over the skylight and peered in. A few dozen feet below, inside the warehouse, three burly men pulled equipment off shelves and tore through boxes in the cool glow of flashlights. No Beard Dude though. Just a gray-haired woman standing in their midst, barking orders. The mullet lady from the gunfight. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she didn’t look happy.

“Ko,” Matt whispered. “What’re you doing?”

Mom gave me a frantic wave. “Dia is going to see you!”

Garrett was suddenly standing in the living room beside us, his big eyes on the screen. “Dia Bosko? She was the one who pinned the Talisman’s loss on Father all those years ago, despite it being stolen on her watch. She is the reason he lost his company—and why he’s sick.” He stepped forward, his arms tensed, cocking his head. “What are we doing with her?”

“I, uh …” I began. “I was just trying to—”

Above my bot, an owl screeched, and my gut turned to stone.

Dia’s head snapped back to look up at the skylight.

I jerked away. But my footing slipped—and my bot went skittering down the roof, grasping at nothing as I slid.

Mom inhaled sharply and lunged toward the power strip in my periphery. “Ko!”

“Grab something!” Matt shouted.

“I’m trying!” I yelled, my face ablaze, the futon frame digging into my back. But then I ran out of roof and my bot slid into night air, my stomach fleeing to my throat.

Fuck! My bot’s head bounced off the ladder as he fell. Pain lanced through my own temple, panic rising as rungs slipped past my outstretched hands.

But just as the bottom of the ladder flew past, I somehow clamped onto a rung, the sudden stop jerking painfully at my shoulders.

Sweat slid from my brow in the living room. I swayed in the cool air, just breathing, before dropping to the blacktop. If Otokotronics hadn’t seen me, they’d for sure heard me.

Matt raced down the ladder to join my bot.

Mom kneeled on the carpet, her chest heaving, one hand on the power strip. “Now quietly make your way into those trees.”

A door slammed somewhere on the other side of the warehouse. There were footsteps, urgent voices.

I made myself dash after Matt’s bot across the lot and into the wooded area. We sprinted onto a hidden deer trail in fading dusk, our arms raised to deflect the branches prickling our faces.

But when we turned a corner, Matt’s bot went sprawling into the dirt with a grunt, and I nearly trampled him before pulling up short.

“Ow!” he said. “What the hell was that?”

There was a thin trench in the ground right across the trail, as if carved with a stick. I fished out one of Mom’s stolen pen lights from my bot’s pocket and flicked it on, following the trench away from the trail and into a thicket. Was this … a primitive trap? Either way, getting off-trail wasn’t a bad idea with Otokotronics looking for us.

Matt’s bot followed behind me. “What is it?”

Our bots stumbled into a small clearing where the trench ended at an old oak, human footprints in the dried mud encircling it. They were small. Petite. About my size, actually.

My spine tingled. In a crook of the oak, a mess of pine needles and flattened packing material made a sort of nest, as if someone had bedded down here for the night. It was a place you’d only be desperate enough to sleep if you didn’t have anywhere else to go.

Or if, say, you were a frightened, barefoot girl on the run from an evil robotics megacorporation.

A shiver ran through me. If Ko Prime was once here, the Talisman could be too. So, pulse still pounding, I crouched to dig through the refuse, unearthing two flat objects tucked against the tree behind a neat ring of pine cones.

One was a greasy napkin with the familiar checkerboard logo of Mission Pizza.

The other was a small dog-eared photo—a headshot of my mother in her twenties, looking simultaneously beautiful and defiant with all the long brown hair in the world.

Matt and I shared a gasp. A parade of emotions swept through me—confusion, jealousy, anger. Ko Prime had a photo of my mother. What the hell was their connection?

Mom blanched, pacing to the media center and powering off the console, leaving a sudden hollow feeling where BrainLink used to be. “I think we’ve done quite enough for one night,” she said. “I’ll send someone to recover the bots when it’s safe … and do a more thorough search.”

“Mother,” I said evenly, pushing to my feet, “I think we need to talk.”