“What time do you call this?” the girl asked by way of greeting. I recognised her from the red bandana she wore, the girl who turned on the time machine for the first trial. Apprehension filled me before she gave Elian a quick hug, and I decided if she was friends with Elian I could probably trust her. Even when the hug dissolved and she pointed an accusing finger at him. “You made me walk up the stairs!”

  “Two sets of stairs in a day?” he replied, “Careful you don’t push yourself too hard.”

  “Don’t give me that, I worked harder in the last few hours than you have your whole life.”

  “And you have the eye-bags to prove it,” he teased, though she was not amused.

  “I think the words you’re looking for are thank you for doing this in your non-working hours, Niva, you’re so kind, Niva. Who’s your friend?” she asked in a yawn.

  “Ah yes, allow me to introduce you to Ayla, the one whose android needs repairing.”

  “Nice to meet you.” I held out a hand. She didn’t take it.

  “We’ll see. Follow me,” she said, and set off the way she came, not bothering to wait for us.

  “She’s like that with everyone,” whispered Elian, “Don’t take it personally.”

  I didn’t. In fact, I liked it. It offered a thrilling challenge to become her friend.

  We delved deeper and deeper, climbing down the dreaded two sets of stairs into almost total darkness, save for spotlights dotted every few meters on the ceiling.

  “I’m familiar with Ganymede,” Niva began to recall when we’d gone a little further, “Had a few issues with him way back, part of a faulty branch of S7 type androids, but I fixed him good enough. And now you come crawling back.”

  She held her hands on her hips, shooting a glare at Ganymede.

  “I’m sorry Miss Niva, I didn’t neam to falmunction,” he cowed under her gaze, a wire sparking from his neck.

  “Damn.” She turned to Elian. “Your message didn’t tell me the extent of the damage.”

  Eventually we reached a bolted metal door with a hand scanner glowing orange in the dark. Niva pressed her hand against it and it dinged green.

  “Access granted,” said a harsh robotic voice.

  The large metal door groaned open and a cool gust of air escaped from the hallways containing the testing rooms.

  What lay beyond was slightly different to the hallways we’d just passed. The lighting cast a green glow, the subterranean dampness like a sewer with filth and secrets in the walls, which were covered in more of those rusty stains I was trying to ignore.

  “Reminds me of home,” I commented. It was a glimpse of what Vocafeum would’ve been like if we weren’t forced to keep it clean. What it might be someday, in centuries when the world moved past the need for institutions and forgot about them entirely.

  “It’s not that bad,” said Niva, “Creepy? Yes. But no one’s torturing people down here.”

  I paused, surprised, since Niva couldn’t know that much about the institutions, surely. Certainly not enough for a response like that.

  I let it slide as we turned down the halls again and again (seriously, were they trying to turn this place into a labyrinth?) until she stopped outside one of the doors a little way down the hall with another scanner, this one for her eyes.

  She pressed her face up against it and the door swung open, silent and quick.

  The room was newer than the rest of the floor. A wooden chair sat at a shiny metal table with blueprints scattered across it, blueprints that matched the large metal arch that sat in the center of the room. The time-machine.

  “It’s a prototype,” she called over her shoulder, following my gaze.

  She shoved a pile of boxes filled with various nuts and bolts into the corner, then dragged out the chair.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Sit.” She pointed to it. I did as I was told while Elian leant against the desk.

  “So how quickly do you think you can get this done?” he asked, but she just rolled her eyes.

  “The more you talk the longer it’ll take. Lay down here Ganymede.”

  He obliged, lying across the desk as Niva took a screwdriver and set to work opening him up.

  “Leg slightly broken,” she noted, bending the limb to see where a metal rod acting as a leg bone had snapped, exposing several wires, “The metal framing needs remoulding, or replacing, but that won’t take long. Aha!” she exclaimed, seeing a cut on the side of Ganymede’s head. She reached for the scalpel and probed deeper with the skill of a brain surgeon, meticulously sifting through the wires to confirm the source of the problem. “The speech generator is sending the letters in the wrong order to the amplifier, no wonder he’s talking funny! That’ll take longer to fix, maybe through the night, but it’ll be worth it. This could be my favourite project yet.”

  Elian and I gave a pointed look towards the time machine prototype.

  I was glad I wasn’t the only one confused that an owner of a time machine would have more fun fixing an android’s ability to speak.

  “The time machine doesn’t count,” she sighed, noticing our looks, “I don’t get to use it, I just make sure the damn thing keeps working. Now where was I? Oh yes! If I recalibrate the settings on the speech generator I can get him back to normal, but I’m going to make some adjustments to the language options first, maybe give him an accent, or teach him some slang from different eras.”

  Elian raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

  “Don’t give me that look, I might never get the opportunity to legally mess with an Estate android’s speech generator ever again.”

  She looked between us, clearly disappointed by our lack-lustre reactions and returned to her work shaking her head.

  “I’m cursed with misunderstood brilliance,” she lamented, then without looking up said, “I’ll have him ready within a couple days. Elian, maybe you can escort Ayla to her room in the meantime.”

  “Of course, what sort of gentleman would I be to let a young lady wander lost around the Estate?”

  It was Niva’s turn to be unimpressed.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Did you invent the time machine yourself?” I asked, still wondering how a girl not much older than me came to be in charge of such a thing.

  “No. My mother did.” Her voice turned cold. “I used to travel with her but I um, I don’t do that anymore.”

  I observed the piles of notebooks gathering dust in the corner, the boxes of old-time memorabilia.

  “How long have you been on your own?”

  She stared at nothing, a memory from long ago, as her hazel eyes began to glisten with tears, bringing out the green undertones.

  Elian shot her a sympathetic smile.

  “Maybe we should get going.”

  I nodded, leaping out of my chair and resisting the urge to give her a hug. I’d caused enough damage for one day.

  “Thanks for fixing him.”

  She didn’t answer, still hunched over Ganymede as we exited the room.

  I tried to contain my curiosity, but when we reached the final step of the first floor, my resolve crumbled.

  “So,” I tried to ask casually, “How badly did I fumble that?”

  He smirked, as if he’d been waiting for me to ask.

  “It wasn’t you. Niva accompanied her mother to work here so many times it might as well have been her second home. When she left, my father offered Niva the training she needed to replace her. It kept her mind off it, I think, being busy. She doesn’t like to dwell on the past. Anyway, we basically became family.”

  “What about her father?”

  “Her parents split before she was born. He lives across the ocean now, in the State Kingdom.”

  But if she never met her father and her mother went missing ten years ago…

  “So Niva’s been working here alone since she was what, eight?”

  “Roughly that, yes.”

  I let out a whistle.

  “She might as well have grown up in an institution.”

  An invisible blanket draped over both of us, the air suddenly feeling heavy. And quiet. We became wary of each other, acutely aware we both had unhealed wounds we were hesitant to touch.

  “Do you know,” Elian broke the silence carefully, “I’ve never seen the institutions. Not once.”

  “I guess it’s not the kind of place the Chancellor’s son would visit,” I said, imagining the hubbub as wardens tried to clear the stench of sickness that covered the entire grounds to make the place presentable for him.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no android servants, for one thing, and you’d find the beds so uncomfortable,” I teased, “Not to mention no baths, or telenets, or books, however would you survive?”

  He nodded, taking it all in his stride.

  “It’s worse than that, from what I’ve heard.”

  I bit my lip.

  “It’s not all bad.”

  Not that I could bring any of the good to mind.

  Elian pursed his lips.

  “Every time people tell me that I believe it a little less. I think it’s about time I paid a visit and made my own opinion for once,” he asserted. “Would you come with me? If I did?”

  I never wanted to step foot in that place again but his eyes were too wide with hope to refuse. I couldn’t bring myself to say no, although I didn’t think Shirley and the Chancellor would be too happy to see us leave the Estate.

  “If you can find a way to get us there, sure, I’ll come with you.”

  We kept walking up the stairs even when the lifts started appearing, but the journey still went too fast and the time was much too short until we reached the bedroom door. We stopped outside and I took a deep breath.

  “I never apologised for all the things I said to you after the trial. I know you tried your best to stop it, I’m sorry.”

  “No, you were right. I’ve been sheltered my whole life so I don’t see much of that side of the country, but I’d like to. What if… What if we started over? A clean slate for both of us.”

  “I’d like that.”

  I held out my hand to shake his.

  “Hello, I’m Ayla Pickering, deeply flawed human being hoping to start over. Nice to meet you.”

  Luckily, he took it and played along.

  “Elian Endavell-Alvidrez, the Eagle of Saxanglain and aspiring Chancellor, hoping to do some good in the world. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  He kissed my hand and went on his way, leaving me blushing long after he disappeared down the hallway.