"Stop. Please. Philo, it's me. The robot. And I'm Rachel too. You said you didn't really care what I looked like in the real world."

He ran. One chrome arm shot out, to cage him.

I'm not really a robot, okay? I'm not... Just a robot. I'm Zoë Graystone, and I am trapped in here. My father put me in this body after I died, okay?"

He dodged. Another arm, to the other side, pinning him against the shelves of the lab. The robot towered over him, blood on its fingertips, caging a boy between its arms. A girl stood in the lab, with her arms around the boy she loved. "And I can get to Gemenon if you help me."

He screamed for his boss. He screamed for her father. She kept talking, that mechanical chrome voice, nearly Zoë's. Nearly Rachel's. He was hysterical. She put one cold hand over his mouth, begging him to listen.

"Philo, don't do this right now, okay? Help me! I need to escape. My friend let me down, and my father tried to hurt me, okay? You're the only one that cares about me right now. Please. I need you."

She stood above him, aching. He looked up into her eyes, the cold bulk of her, the red cycling eye and the steel against his skin, and his head dropped, and he nodded. He promised to help the girl that he loved. He believed everything she said. He believed not a word.

"I told you it didn't matter what you looked like... And it doesn't."

She thanked him, and she gave him his mission -- to steal the U-87, the monstrous killing body curled around his own, from the lab. To drive it to the docks, stash it in a shipping carton that didn't exist, that wouldn't clear Customs, that would be inspected and found to contain high-profile military materiel. She thanked him, and she was desperate, and her house was burning down. She was six months old, she was sixteen.

Philo breaks away, to key in a security breach while her defenses are down. For the moment she still believes in love. And for a moment, it's her father's fire in her eyes, the light and fire of his rage. She screams at him, and slaps at him with strong cold hands.

I mean to say she takes something that she loves, and destroys it. Like a bottle thrown against the wall in protest. Zoë drives then, madly, crashing gates and running lights, away from the Bay and toward freedom, into the forest along the highways. Her memories are our goodbye, as she races toward her end of line.