Gav’s eyes went wide, moving to the bullet and back to me. Am I bulletproof? I could almost hear him think.

  Every bullet that would have ripped through Gav, and therefore me, made a loud thunk as it bounced off his body and then another duller thud as the flattened bullets rolled around on the ground.

  It felt like we were under fire forever, but it couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds. The assault rifles I’d seen were capable of emptying their magazine in roughly five seconds flat. So in no time at all really, the storm of bullets ceased.

  “They’re reloading,” I said.

  Gav gave me the slightest nod, and jumped to his feet, or more literally, pushed himself off the ground. Using one arm, he threw himself away from the ground, twisting with inertia, performing a midair pirouette so he landed facing the outside. He landed like a track athlete ready to start a race, and in the near instant that his feet touched the ground, he exploded out the door.

  I got up to follow Gav, and as I approached the door a few stray bullets created a splatter of splinters in front of me. The sounds of gunfire hadn’t ceased, but none of the volley was reaching any part of the house. I dared to glance outside, and saw that both men had concentrated their fire– fruitlessly –on Gav.

  Their bullets bounced uselessly off Gav’s, and I heard one yell “Is he supposed to be bulletproof?” Again, I registered that there was something wrong with his voice, but again I couldn’t say what.

  A second later, the one that yelled had his face smashed into the side of the van they had come in, and I swore I saw sparks.

  The other man, paralyzed with fear, watched his comrades face get smashed in. The man found the will to move, and raised his weapon to fire, but nothing came out the barrel. That’s when I stepped out and fired on him. The man registered the sound of my weapon just in time to catch the bullet with his eye, and this time I was sure that I had seen sparks of electricity.

  Gav took a step back from the remains of the man whose head he had smashed into the van. I came from behind to examine the bodies.

  The man I had shot had an oddly clean entrance wound, and a closer look revealed that there was only the thinnest layer of blood where skin met metal. The other man’s mangled head revealed a much more obvious architecture of silicon and circuits.

  “Robots?” Gav said. He was voicing a mote of disbelief, not really asking a question.

  “I don't know,” I said, kneeling down beside them.

  Both men were identical, and though their faces were mangled, it was easy to tell that they could be twins. Though it was probably more accurate to say that they were both the same “model”.

  The robot men’s weapons were empty, and both had used up the entirety of their backup magazines. They were both wearing long coats, whose pockets I started to rifle through. In one of their pockets, I found a set of keys for the van. What I didn’t find was any identification, which made sense, but I also didn’t find a phone or any other communication device. Perhaps the robots could communicate to their leader by some in-built device. If so, then it’s possible that Gav and I had just destroyed it.

  My own pocket started vibrating. I answered the call, getting up at the same time to check out the back of the van. The back of this one had two doors, and looked like it might be carrying something useful.

  “Hello? Mr. Alvarez?” came the voice in my phone, it was Lexa’s. “I can’t see anything.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear. I’d answered a video call assuming it had been a voice call.

  “Better?” I said.

  “I can see you now. Is Gav there with you?”

  “He is.” I flipped my phone’s camera to a very bashful Gav, who suddenly took a keen interest in the pavement that let him face away from the camera.

  I think Lexa was about to say hi to him, but the “hi” died in her throat the moment he turned away. Then she just sighed.

  I flipped the phone back to myself.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure Lexa, did your manager agree to help us?” I asked, opening the back of the van, and finding exactly what I was hoping to find.

  Bingo.

  “No, not even a little bit. Actually when I asked him he got really weird, like really. The bad kind of weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Like serial-killer-psycho-weird. He asked me why I asked him, and then he asked me about you guys. He was giving me super creep vibes so I lied and said you didn’t give me your name.”

  “Appreciate that Lexa.”

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  “Yeah, no problem, but there’s something else. Look.”

  Lexa’s camera flipped to focus on a monitor. It looked like footage from one of the gym’s cameras was running on it. It definitely wasn’t current, because sunlight was spilling from the glass walls. The video was in surprisingly high definition, and in color, which was odd for a twenty four hour security system.

  The footage appeared to be mundane. The only thing happening on screen was people running on treadmills and lifting weights. Some were doing stretches.

  Lexa’s voice came as a whisper from somewhere behind the camera.

  “This video’s from the last time Gav showed up. After my manager interrogated me about you guys, he sent me home. I clocked out, but instead of going home I hid. I watched him step into the security, and when he came out, I snuck in!”

  Something started to happen in the footage. The lights started flashing in the gym. There wasn’t any sound to go with the footage, but you could tell that something loud started playing on the sound system because everyone in the gym started to cover their ears. Most of them looked like they were trying to fight against something that was happening in their heads, but if they were, then the fact that they were blindsided meant they were at a disadvantage. Most fell to their knees, only to rise again moments later, back straight, and arms at the side. All except one.

  There was a figure in the corner that I now recognized as Gav. While everyone had already fallen and risen, he was still struggling. People around him began to form into a line, like soldiers ready for inspection, or maybe more like test subjects, because it looked like someone– an old man –had come from out of frame to examine them. He was wearing a tracksuit that looked just like Lexa’s, all black, with red and green striped dunning down the side.

  Gav seemed to gain control of himself, at least enough to ignore the debilitating sound– if it was still playing –and he looked around, seeing everyone forming into those lines. He rose to stand, panicking as he continued to assess the situation, ultimately choosing to run. Gav sprinted out of frame. He did not go unnoticed by the old man, who had stopped examining one of the other gym members to gawk at Gav.

  The footage paused, and then Lexa started navigating some menus on the monitor.

  “Who's that old guy?” I asked.

  “The old guy? That’s my manager.”

  Lexa finished navigating through menus and a new angle of the gym around the same time started playing. The camera was pointed at the front of the gym. Gav came sprinting from off screen, and as he did I noticed that sunlight wasn’t spilling from the crystal walls of the gym anymore, they had gone opaque, black like obsidian glass.

  Gav stopped in front of the entrance and tried to push it open, but it didn’t budge. He looked behind himself for a second, but if he saw anything it was impossible to tell. He refocused on the door, and took a few steps back, aligning himself to one of the panels next to the door. He then took a running leap, crashing through the glass, and running from the gym.

  “Bro!” said Gav, suddenly appearing behind and making me jump inside my skin.

  “Is that Gav?” asked Lexa.

  I looked up at Gav. Surprisingly he hadn’t immediately tried to fixate on the pavement. Our eyes, and I silently communicated to him that he had to at least say “hi”.

  “Uhh… hey, Lexa.”

  “Hey Gav, how’re you doing?”

  “I’m good, still… uhm… getting my head back together.”

  “Great! That’s uhm… really great!”

  There was a short silence, and then the camera flipped back to Lexa’s face.

  “Gav, if there’s anything you need, I just want you to know that–”

  There was a loud knocking that made Lexa go quiet. She put a hand over her mouth, and her eyes flashed to something offscreen. She turned her camera away from her face to show us a door with the shadow of a person underneath it.

  An old man’s voice came from behind the door. It sounded off, the same way the robot’s who attacked us had sounded off. Like something trying to imitate a human voice.

  “Lexa? Lexa! I know you’re in there. Open this goddamn door right now and I might let you keep your job!”

  Lexa didn’t reply.

  For a moment there was nothing but tense silence. The shadow underneath the door shifted a little, and the old man let out a long sigh. Then his hand burst through the door, right above where the handle was.

  Lexa let out a yelp.

  “I heard that!” said the old man. “I knew you were in there.”

  The hand that had punched through the door fondled the spaces underneath it to search for the handle, finding it, and then turning it to open the door.

  The door burst open, and waiting on the other side was the old man from the video. He had a head of closely cut, almost shaven, white hair. He looked like the robots we had taken out, only older looking, with a few wrinkles that looked unnatural. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed under other circumstances, but his wrinkles looked like they were molded, not formed. His face was like a mask that was made using something that very convincingly mimicked human skin, but it only just barely crested the hill out of the uncanny valley.

  “Come here monkey!” yelled the old man, charging at Lexa.

  Lexa jumped to escape her manager’s charge, leaping right over him, but dropping her phone in the process. It clattered to the ground, but in such a way that it wound up propped up against something so that it landed pointing at the door. Lexa was sprinting down a concrete hallway, and a second later her manager was doing the same.

  Eventually the only thing her phone was capturing was a closed door.

  “Nando! We have to go back to the gym!”

  “Agreed let me just–”

  Gav stumbled backwards.

  Either it had been difficult to notice in the moonlight, or it had started to happen only moments ago, but Gav was green again.

  “It’s happening again, bro, why? I just had some…”

  Gav slurred the end of his sentence.

  “New and improved formula,” I said. “They wanted customers to resupply sooner, I guess to increase profits, only they made the half-life too short.”

  “Am I gonna die, like Michael? Do you think he had any more of the green stuff in his house?”

  “You’re not gonna die Gav, and we don’t have to scrounge around Michael’s place to find more of the green stuff.”

  I stepped aside, and let Gav see the treasure trove that our robot assailants had left us.

  “Nice bro!”

  We got Gav fixed up with another dose, this time managing to get it to him before he went catatonic. After that we loaded up the crate of green stuff in Gav’s van, and went back inside Michael’s house to fill up the shakers and an empty water bottle we had with water so we could prepare some more doses on the way.

  We left just before we started hearing sirens from somewhere in the distance. Police had arrived to answer the sounds of gunfire from earlier. Luckily, they were coming from the opposite end of the neighborhood that we had decided to leave from.

  I looked into the rearview mirror to witness the oncoming red, white, and blues of the police’s lights flashing. Appreciating our lucky break.

  Silhouetted against a backdrop of flashing lights, the robots’ bodies were slumped against their van, and although we were already a ways away, I could swear that I was able to see something climbing out of one of their chests.