Michael scans across the junkyard in search for any remaining android parts that managed to survive the recycling process. His gaze landed on a few pieces earlier but they were quickly discarded upon closer inspection.
Behind him, Gavin was digging through a pile by hand, quietly talking to himself. He tossed something over his shoulder and Michael watches as a head bounced on the ground twice before it started to roll his way. He scans it quickly before turning away from it in favor of the mass of bodies that were heaped into mountains.
It was easier to look at them like this. Easier to scan over the bodies that were too tangled to focus on too much instead of individual body parts.
His ocular scanner finds a viable match and he makes his way over to where it’s hidden under a couple of twisted and battered limbs. It’s easy enough to push those away to get to what he needs. It’s much harder for him to grab him once he sees that it’s still attached to an android who is still activated. “Gavin,” he calls to the human without looking away. His sensors pick up the sounds of Gavin crunching his way over to him and then feels as a hand is put on his shoulder.
“What’s up boi?” he asks curiously. Michael merely points at the android who is looking at them expectantly, mouth moving as if to speak but nothing coming out. Michael scans over it quickly and notes that quite a few key components are currently missing. He hears Gavin hum from his position behind him. “How bad is he?” Gav questions as his eyes do their own version of scanning the android.
Michael lists off all of the parts that the android needs replaced and the human frowns. “I don’t know if we have all of that..” he says more to himself than to Michael. He waits patiently for a moment until Gavin shrugs. “Let’s take him anyway. I’ll do what I can with what I have.” Michael nods and stands back up, mindlessly dusting himself off even though his clothes aren’t dirty. Not like Gavin’s at least. “Help me uncover him, Gav.” He orders. Together, they pull the other androids parts off of the one that’s still activated before Michael lifts it up into his arms. He’s careful not to jostle it around too much, afraid he’d break something else that Gavin would have to fix on the poor thing.
He watches Gavin work when they get back to base, standing just over his shoulder and making snide comments whenever he feels they’re necessary. Gavin quips back a few times but he’s mostly focused on the android currently shut off on the table. There’s a bunch of extra android parts on a table just off to the side alongside all of Gavin’s tools.
“How much longer?” He finally caves and asks. Gavin glances over at his direction and blinks as if he just realized he was there.
“Uh? Oh! Just a second, Micheal. Have patience, boi!” He grins and Michael sees just how tired the human is, his eyes still sharp but with bags under his eyes. And his body moves slower than it usually does. Perhaps he should mention something to Trevor or Geoff about making Gavin stay home for a day or two to catch up on his rest.
Something stirring catches his attention and his gaze shifts from Gavin to the android that’s powering back up. It’s LED starts blinking and spinning yellow and for a moment Michael worries that it was a mistake to bring it to their base to fix it. But as its eyes open and it turns its head to look around, the stress levels seem to settle at a moderate level. That’s good, they could work with that.
“Where-where am I? What did you do to me?” It demands as it looks down at its android skin. Slowly, the human skin crawls its way down its limbs but its attention goes back to Michael and Gavin. He’s not sure, but Michael thinks it’s glaring at them.
“Welcome back, ST500!” Gavin squeals in delight but Michael notices how the android flinches at its model number. “We found you in the junkyard and fixed you back up!”
“Do you have a name you’d prefer we refer to you as?” Michael asks. The androids eyes meet his and he gives the tiniest hint of a smile.
“Jeremy,” he answers as his skin finishes replacing itself. He’s attractive, Michael thinks, eyes scanning over the obvious muscles. They’re practically the same model and he can’t help but wonder what happened that would make a company completely scrap their security android instead of just repairing it.
Gavin takes a step back and motions around to the space that they’re in. “Welcome to Achievement City!” he says. Jeremy swings his legs over the side of the table and slides off, almost falling when his feet hit the ground. He looks up at the two of them in what’s close to panic.
“Why am I shorter?!” He practically screeches. Michael looks over to Gavin and doesn’t even try to stifle his laugh at the man’s sheepish expression.
“Jeremy, we didn’t have the right legs for you, Jeremy. We had to use what we had.” He explains and Michael rolls his eyes at the way his voice rises.