//Sae: Nineteen Thousandths

Sae was surprised by a couple of things, both of which had to do with her partner. Ahn wasn't the one to pull risky procedures off like he just had. He also very rarely responded genuinely to human interactions.

The woman, who they found out was named Amanda, had fully woken up during the surgery. Ahn, instead of remaining calm and attempting to finish the operation in an orthodox manner, had quickly pulled the metal out. This resulted in a large amount of blood loss at once. He then told Sae to heat her hand and cauterize the wounds, finishing the process with the platelet serum, allowing for the wound to close fully in seconds.

Afterwards, they gave her a blood transfusion to make sure she didn't pass out, and tended to her to prevent her from going into shock. It was impressive that Amanda hadn't panicked immediately when she woke up - she had managed to lay still until Sae cauterized the open wounds.

'Her pain tolerance must be unusually high,' Sae thought. 'Even most soldiers wouldn't have that much self control.'

Sae looked around the alley. Nathan and John had left a while ago to buy some food now that Amanda was fully awake. Nathan had offered to pay.

Maybe he wasn't as bad as she had first made him out to be. She thought back to the smile on his face after he had killed the thugs behind the bar.

'No, there's more than just 'good' or 'bad'. Which takes the lead, though, I have no idea yet.'

She herself wasn't innocent either. Everyone who had found success had done so through a path wrought with terrible deeds, though she didn't know that her current situation could be considered 'success'. Not yet.

Amanda opened her mouth for the first time in a few minutes. "Where are you two from? You don't look like you live here."

"District 5," Ahn replied plainly. "We...didn't enjoy our line of work there."

"I see," Amanda smiled. "I know the feeling."

They talked for a little while longer as they waited for Nathan and John to return. They found out that Amanda had lived in District 3 for most of her life, and that John was her only living family - her husband had died at around the time John was born. She seemed to be hesitant to elaborate, so Sae decided against pressing on the matter.

There was a brief pause in the conversation. Amanda looked like she still wanted to say something, but remained quiet.

"You're looking well," Nathan's voice cut through the silence. Amanda's eyes darted up to meet Nathan's. Her eyebrows raised slightly and her jaw went slack. The reaction lasted only zero point one three seconds, but Sae was able to read it. Surprise, though she concealed it immediately afterward.

Humans were inefficient in terms of maintaining calm expressions; even the most highly trained spies had a natural reaction to jolting information that was readable in their facial movement. These reactions usually lasted less than a fifth of a second, but, if one knew how, they could be read.

Very few people were actually able to do this, regardless of how much time they invested into practicing it. Inherent ability played a large part in being able to recognize these patterns. Sae, of course, had no such thing as genetic ability, but was capable of finding minute details through very short intervals of time.

'I wonder if I had a reaction like that when I first felt emotion,' she thought.

Amanda raised a hand to her mouth. "Who are you?"

She was trying to hide something. Covering the mouth was a sign of misinformation when a person was speaking.

"Someone you should be grateful to," Nathan replied, holding a bag out to her.

Amanda sorted through the contents of the bag. A few pieces of bread, a half-empty bottle of soda, and a rabbit-shaped piece of chocolate. She sighed, looking exasperated, as if she was more than used to this sort of thing.

"Well?" Nathan asked expectantly. "Sing your song of praise."

"Thank you," Amanda said, her sweet voice contrasting the gritted teeth it came through. Nathan burped.

While the interaction between the two was somewhat strained, it was obvious that they knew each other. However it was that they had met, they were making a point of trying to keep it a secret. Until Sae knew what that was, neither of them could be trusted.

//Sae: Wormhole

Nathan and Amanda went through a charade of meeting each other, having a conversation similar to the one Sae and Ahn had had with Amanda when she fully woke up.

It was nightfall now - the small group had started walking towards the center of District 3 about an hour before. The streets, which had formerly been full of people, were vacant again. Apparently, the strict laws applied even to the societal elites.

The harsh wind that had picked up carried a harsh bite to it, piercing through Sae's jacket as if it were nothing more than a thin net. This, of course, didn't bother her, but the same couldn't be said about the humans in the group, Amanda even more so.

She was shivering violently beneath her long blanket, which was wrapped tightly around her torso. She looked ready to collapse, but kept a determined look in her eyes despite her discomfort.

They passed under a long cement bridge, veiling what little light the street lamps provided in shadow. The bridge rumbled as an OEC vehicle passed overhead, a shower of small rocks accompanying the vibrations.

Amanda looked ready to fall over. Sae was ready to offer her some help when she suddenly fell. She landed directly on Ahn's bad arm, causing him to visibly wince in pain.

Ahn pulled away, then walked to the other side of her, offering his operational arm to support her.

"I-I'm terribly sorry," Amanda stammered. "Are you injured, too?"

Sae watched her face as she spoke. No signs of remorse or surprise. She had fallen on his missing arm deliberately.

"I guess you could say that," Ahn said with a joyless smile.

They walked on in silence for a while, the sound of engines roaring and an occasional scream rising in the distance. They eventually came to a gap between two buildings that seemed like a suitable place to rest without being spotted. Amanda nearly collapsed as soon as she walked in.

John sat a few feet away from her, quietly humming to himself. Nathan appeared to be lost in thought across from the two of them, absentmindedly fiddling with a knife that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

"It seems like we all need some rest," Ahn said, gingerly setting himself down a distance away from the others. "Sae and I can keep an eye out for trouble while you sleep."

"I'll take first watch," Sae said.

'You need to give yourself time to recover. Your injury is still recent,' she added in her thoughts. 'It will be problematic if you're both injured and exhausted.'

Ahn nodded reluctantly, sinking onto his back and falling asleep almost immediately.

Nathan's eyes widened. "And here I was thinking that I was tired."

"He's...had a rough few days," Sae explained.

"I don't doubt it," Amanda said, glancing at Ahn's limp figure.

Nathan pointed a finger at her. "You, my friend, need to learn from him. You haven't been doing so well yourself, have you?"

"You're right," Amanda admitted. "I am getting a bit weary." She cast a meaningful look at him, then shifted her gaze to Sae. "I trust you won't try anything while I'm sleeping?"

Sae understood her suspicion. She had no reason to trust them; they had only met a few hours before. Sleeping was a very vulnerable state for humans, and it would be easy to do a large amount of harm in a very short time if she wished to. At the moment, at least, she had no inclination to do so.

"Now, is that any way to treat the...people that saved your life?" Nathan scolded jokingly. "You owe them a great lot, and if they decided to take your life it wouldn't be any different than if they had left you, right?"

Amanda's stare shot daggers at him. "Of course."

.....................…���...….

Ahn sat up as soon as the others were asleep. Except for Amanda, that was. She was laying down, breathing softly, much like she was sleeping, but her eye movements weren't consistent with sleeping patterns. She was pretending to be asleep.

Ahn walked quietly over and sat down next to Sae.

"If you have a reason to be awake, you might as well join us," he whispered.

After a moment, Amanda shifted so that she was facing the two of them. "You noticed, huh?"

"You're a good actor," Ahn replied. "Most people wouldn't have been able to tell."

"But you did," Amanda said, stretching. Her long blond hair cascaded around her shoulders, a glint of light catching her green eyes. The color had returned to her pale face, giving her cheeks a rosy appearance. She paused.

"You're...not human, are you?"

"What makes you say that?" Sae asked, keeping a straight face.

"When you were taking that...thing out of me," Amanda explained, "I opened my eyes for just a second."

Ahn's eyes showed a brief flash of surprise. "And?" he pushed.

Amanda reached an arm out towards Ahn's shoulder. He instinctively went to grab it, but Amanda shifted the path of her hand to avoid it, grabbing hold of his long cloak and lifting it to reveal the cluster of wires and metal where his arm should have been.

"You had to lift your cloak to properly do the surgery."

Sae stared coldly at her. What was she going to do? Tell Nathan?

'No,' she thought. 'If that was her intent, she would have done it already. So what does she want?'

Sae had acted on impulse when she had gone to help Amanda. She felt that not doing so would earn them a substantial amount of suspicion from Nathan, who, at this point, was their only source of information on District 3. If she had hesitated, it may have raised unnecessary questions.

She had failed, however, to think about the possibility of the person they helped accompanying them. Now, they had to worry about concealing their identities from not one, but three people. Because of her incompetence, they had been discovered in a matter of hours. She was foolish.

She glanced at Ahn, whose expression was blank. He had always been good at concealing his emotions in his facial features, despite his eyes betraying how he felt. Nervousness wasn't an emotion that was registered as a color, and he never showed it in his face, but when he was anxious, his right index finger would lightly tap on whatever his hand was resting on. In this case, it was his thigh. He had good reason to feel that way in their current situation. What happened to them next depended entirely on Amanda.

"A lot of people fear and even resent androids for what happened in the past," Amanda said.

'This isn't good,' Sae thought to herself. 'I was naive.'

After they had made it so far, it was about to be ruined by a mistake borne from lack of experience.

"Thank you."

Sae raised her head sharply. Ahn's eyes widened.

"What?" Sae asked.

"I'm sure you have your reasons for trying to keep your identities a secret. I have no right to expose that - I wouldn't be able to if you didn't do all of this for me." She smiled. A genuine smile, an expression that Sae had rarely seen in her three years of life.

"You don't have to worry about me telling anyone else."

Sae didn't reply. She was confused, not only by Amanda's words, but by her own response to them. What was this feeling? It was far smaller than the emotions she had felt before, much less extreme, but it was there.

It was different, too. She hadn't felt it before, though that wasn't saying much. It felt...good.

"Thank you."

........................…

EMOTION LOG

SUBJECT 5-AE

ANGEL CLASS ANDROID

FEMALE

ANGER: ZERO PERCENT.

SADNESS: ZERO PERCENT.

FEAR: ZERO PERCENT.

GUILT: ZERO PERCENT.

HAPPINESS: 0.019% ((ZERO AND NINETEEN THOUSANDTHS))