I crawled into the back of my cage and pulled my knees to my chest. My straw bedding was damp, and it smelled like piss—the androids hadn’t changed it in days.

Six other people were on display across from me, not counting the pretty blond girl who’d been euthanized in the night. She was still curled up in the corner of her glass enclosure. Hadn’t sold fast enough, apparently.

Each of the cells was marked with a bright red letter in the top left-hand corner. I could make out a pair of D’s, three C’s, and a B, and my cell was marked with an F, the same as the dead girl’s.

A female android—a Child Unit—and a Father Unit clinked down the aisle, their silver skin flaring under the halogens. They paused at a sunken floor pen where two toddlers were playing tug-of-war over a toy rat.

The older of the two, a girl, had the rat’s entire head in her mouth, while the boy held its tail between his teeth. The toy squeaked as they yanked it back and forth.

I closed my eyes, swallowed. Tried to pretend that this wasn’t happening for the ten-thousandth time.

“Sorry, but no,” the Father said. “Raising the young ones isn’t worth the effort. You’ll get bored after a week or two and it’ll end up dying before it’s even strong enough to Pilot.”

“Why does it always have to be about Piloting,” the Child said. One of her eyeballs was protruding from its socket, the glassy orb dangling from a lonely twist of blue wire. The child reached up and popped the eye back in with a practiced gesture, making me wince.

Heads snapped up all along the aisle at the sound of the smaller android’s voice. The other captives pressed their faces up against the glass and smiled at the Child or begged the Father to take them home or just hoped that the longing in their eyes was self-evident, which it was.

Spineless, all of them. Lapdogs already.

The Father stopped in front of my cage. “Ezzie, what about this one?” He rapped a finger against my window, and I flinched back. “He’s a grade F, so I could get him patched up tonight and have him ready for you by morning.”

The Child took the Parental’s hand and tried to tug him away. “Let’s go look at the AI pets,” she said. “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t…I don’t like it.”

“It’s not just about you, Ezzie,” the Father said. “This one could be our ticket out. Aren’t you tired of going hungry? If we could fight him long enough to get him up to Grade B…”

The girl crossed her arms. “You said the same thing the last time you bought a Pit Boy. And the time before that.”

The Father sighed, and for the briefest moment, almost managed to seem human. “Well, this boy might be the right grade, but he does look a little thin. And he doesn’t seem very happy to see us. Maybe we should pick a happy one. No use in making this any harder than it needs to be.”

“You’re not listening to me,” the Child said. “I said no—I don’t want to do this. And the only other Grade F is already dead.”

“Ah,” the Father said, as he scanned the many cages. “You’re right. Guess he’ll have to do.”

“I don’t want him, Dad. Seriously.” The girl tried to pull her father down the aisle again, but he didn’t budge. “Let’s just leave him be.”

“Nonsense.” The Father knelt so that our faces were level. “I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

I spat at the glass and tried to hide my horror behind a snarl. Anything but this, truly. I had no idea what a Pit Boy even was, but I didn’t like the way the words sounded, and I’d seen the way androids treated their human charges.

Electrified collars, one-way chokers, implants that hacked your brain into incentivizing obedience. They’d have me fetching tennis balls within a fortnight, like it or not. I looked back at the dead girl across from me. I’d never been jealous of a corpse before, but I was getting there.

“We apologize for his nastiness,” the Shop said, in a deep voice that sounded from everywhere at once. “This one was plucked from the wild about a week ago.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Plucked. I despised that word. Because it implied that I hadn’t had a life of my own before this cage became my world, that I hadn’t managed just fine before the patrols had caught me pilfering antibiotics from an abandoned pharmacy.

“He might be a bit disobedient early on,” the Shop continued, “but breaking them in is half the fun, right?”

The Father laughed. “True, so true. He’s feral, then?”

“We wouldn’t say feral,” the Shop said. “More like a stray in need of a loving home.”

“See, he needs a home,” the Father said. “Isn’t that the saddest thing you’ve ever heard, Ezzie?”

“No,” the Child said. “It’s not even the saddest thing I’ve heard today.”

The Parental rubbed his silvery forehead, which wrinkled, skin-like. “How much is he?”

“Sixty thousand credits,” the Shop said. “A stellar deal for a Grade F, if I do say so myself.”

“Mom’s gonna be royally pissed if you come home with another—” the Child started.

The Father blew out a puff of air, cutting her off. “We’ll take him.”

I shifted my weight and got my feet underneath me. The Shop would have to let me out if the androids planned on taking me home; I’d have one last chance to get away, and I’d be ready.

“Excellent,” the Shop said. “Would you like to have him neutered? We can do it chemically now, so it’s as hassle-free as it gets.”

A small metallic circle in the back of my enclosure spiraled open and a plastic nozzle poked out of the hole. I took a deep breath and tried not to panic, for all the good that did.

“That won’t be necessary,” the Father said. “This one’s going to be an Avatar.”

“Splendid!” the Shop said. “We just received a new batch of Avatar interfaces earlier today, if you need one of those as well. I’ll knock twenty percent off anything we have in stock if you’re buying the boy.”

“No thanks,” the Father said. “Our old UI worked well enough. We’ll just dig our last Pit Boy up out of the ground and cut it out of him.”

The Child stomped a heel into the tile floor, which cracked beneath her, the fissures spider-webbing out in every direction. “Absolutely not! Father, that’s terrible! They’re not, they’re not—” she trailed off, seeming unable to find the right word. “You shouldn’t treat them like that! It isn’t right. Aaron did good and it was my fault he died in the first place. He earned his rest.”

“Ezzie,” the Parental said. “Look: we can’t afford both. And you won’t be able to Pilot without a UI. I don’t like it either, but we just don’t have any other options.”

“I don’t even want to Pilot!” the Child said. Her eyes were tearing up, brimming over with bright blue fluid. “How many times do I have to say no! You never listen to me anymore! No wonder Mom is—”

The Father backhanded his daughter across the face. He loomed over her, tall and terrible, his gray eyes gone flinty and sharp. When he spoke again, it was in a low, resonant whisper that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end: “no wonder Mom is what, Ezzie?”

The smaller android shrank back, seemed to curl in on herself, to become small. Her shoulders slumped and she dropped her eyes to the floor. “Nothing.” She reached up and put a trembling hand to her cheek.

“Good,” the Father said. “Where were we.”

The Shop cleared its throat, somehow managing to seem uncomfortable. “Well,” the Shop said, “we just got a new interface in that’s still in beta testing, if you want in on that. All you have to do to get a copy is promise to report any bugs you come across while playing.” The Shop dropped its voice. “But between the two of us, nobody really seems to care whether or not you report anything.”

“It’s modern, then?” the Father said. “And safe?”

“Top of the line,” the Shop said. “Your little girl will see and feel everything that the human does. We’ll even waive the installation fee.”

“Alright,” the Father said. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

“Excellent,” the Shop said.

The front panel of my cage retracted sideways into its housing.

I jabbed the Father in his throat, launched myself out of the cage and bolted down the aisle before he had a chance to recover. The other humans howled and threw themselves against their windows as I raced by, but the Child made no effort to chase me down. It almost looked like she was urging me on.

I was halfway out of the store; I could see daylight leaking through the shop’s panoramic window. I was almost—

Something grabbed a fistful of my hair and jerked me back so hard that my feet kicked out in front of me. I looked up to find a hydraulic arm had dropped out of the ceiling and snatched me up. I clawed at the steel fingers that held me, trying to get underneath them so that I could pry them off, but the hand was implacable.

The arm dragged me back to the Child, spun me around to face her, and levered me upright until I could barely touch the ground.

Another arm unfolded out of the ceiling, syringe in hand. “Would you like to do the honors, little one?” the Shop said. It dangled the needle in front of the Child. “It’s just an anesthetic. No need to be cruel, after all.”

The Child shook her head, and the movement sent a pair of acetylene blue tears rolling down her cheeks.

The Father snatched the syringe. “It’s fine, I’ll handle it.”

“Then I’ll get the operating table sterilized,” the Shop said. “The whole procedure should only take ten minutes, then we’ll have him shipped out to the Proving Grounds.”

The Father blurred into motion, and before I could process what was happening, he was sliding the syringe out of the side of my neck. The pain was sharp but fleeting, and it quickly gave way to an intoxicating warmth. Everything went blurry and soft and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open.

The Child went up on her tiptoes and met me eye-to-eye. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want this. But I am so, so sorry.” She kissed my forehead, and everything went dark.