There's countless droids in the City, yeah? The Company produces as many as possible for any reason, designed to think and feel and fear how their bodies break down as they obsolescence comes faster for each new model. They wander (when not restricted) the streets (only where droids are allowed out) and trade Plus with the construction models for watered down paint to write the words of their savior on alley walls away from cameras.
In the Lobby, a new droid gets left to fend for themself and figure out housing. In a district with few watchful eyes, care is given whenever possible. In a part of the city where the only security is Scarecrow units more focused on an easy way to relax than patrolling, a lot can happen. Despite being just another commodity in the city, it's funny that in many ways you’ll have more freedom than flesh-and-bone citizens. Your body won’t ever truly belong to you but your thoughts? Your stories and feelings? The company won’t take them from you, too inhuman to be thought as a risk. A dismissal that saved those of you thrown out onto street corners, avoiding getting flagged for destruction by the system by hiding in the open, rusted joints and cracked plastics making the patrols unwilling to look at you too long.
There’s a system in the city droids. The workers in the human areas hear the gossip of the civilians, the pornodroids hear snatches of Company news and patrol routes, the ones rusting hear the whispers of people who still think being outside means the Company won’t hear you as well. No droid holds true loyalty to the Company, but the admin droids never truly got programmed to have their own thoughts (but there’s loopholes in their code they do their best to exploit).
Between the whirs of machinery and the scraping of rust, as a pronodroid fixes their wig in preparation for the work they don’t have a choice in, crackles of Destroya follow in every droids wake, the graffiti bible shouted from alleys and corner and painted in spaces out of camera reach. Little prophecies are spoken with every reassurance that Destroya will come for them and one day, He does. Clutched in his hands is a droid in blue, an escapee you didn’t realise made it out. But when he takes you past the city lines, he’s holding nothing but old wires.
There’s countless droids in the city, yeah? But there was only one couple you knew truly escaped. That’s not to say actually breaking past the border wasn’t impressive, but you always thought Red and Blue loved each other enough that they were free in all but the physical sense in the Lobby. They kept their model names, being the only pair of them in your building (you, however, were the third Yellow model there. You weren’t the oldest, but you had a better understanding of how to keep life in that building hidden from the outside. Inside the walls, one of the few spots of privacy afforded to your kind, you were Hana).
The two of them were happy, origins be damned. Where one went so would the other, and many times had the building banded together to cover the twos share of customers when Reds battery issues started or when the two hadn't seen each other for a while. As long as the productivity quota is met the Company didn’t care, they only tracked by building not by droid.
When Blue broke that vending machine, you made sure all the droids in the street knew to stumble in front of patrols, knew to act confused at which possible model any row asked you about since there’s so many of you, knew to ignore the anger to offer services. Anything to help them, to delay any pursuers. And when you felt the lines of the city jolt in your circuits you knew they were with Destroya now.
You did not, however, realize how literal that was.
You live somewhere now where your body is your own and the streets are not quite yet for shopping, but no longer for selling yourself. Surprisingly, it's the same city just…. Different now. The Company is no more, a small bomb in human form blew it away while Destroya ripped out the chains that confined you there. Some of the others have left for good but you… you stayed. Your code always dictated you be passive, but you saw the sand coated children wandering in from beyond with their grief and anger twisted in their human circuits, saw the citizens who still jumped at any flash of white, and made your choice. You meet a Girl from out in the Zones who asks unending questions about droids and watches you drag people off the street to give a room in Your building, who grins and starts doing the same to every lost soul she sees when you aren't there and scavenges blankets to decorate the place with. She’s never been fully watched by the Company and you’ve never been far enough out of reach of the company that the true threat is sudden patrols, but together you find a midpoint to help people learn to rest. The white leaks out of your life and the colours of rebuilding stain you now, and you find that you don’t mind your scratches and that etching more patterns makes you feel more your own. You wander the streets at dusk and dawn, and in that inbetween time in this inbetween city, you see them again.
Oh their circuitry shows through their casing now, and the colour is no longer restricted to their wigs, but you knew the sight of those clasped hands anywhere, knew the loving gaze they turned to everyone dear to them and not just each other. They’re stood by one of the walls, where the graffiti bible has extended to include the ones lost. By a small painting of Red-and-Blue in reds and blues, the last thing the old inhabitants of your building did together. Two droids in love who are angels made in neon now, and as you look at them your eyes begin to ache from the strain on your visual processor and the grief in your soul knowing that you’ll never truly live with your old family again. But, oh, they see you and smile and you see the afterimage of Destroya in them. They embrace you and you feel the care of your savior but most of all the love of your friends who left far too soon for you. You know you speak with them, but you can’t recall the specifics of what you said or what they told you. You leave them knowing they aren’t fully gone (but they aren’t fully here) and that they don’t blame you. You know they watch over all the droids now but keep a special eye on their old friends, and they’re glad you’ve kept your old building as a home to people.
You enter that home now, the not quite day but not quite night light spilling through the windows as you climb up the stairs. There's still empty space in here after all, and as you open the long-closed door of what was Red and Blues to finally clear it from the memories you’d trapped it in, you think they would like it if another could learn to be free and love where they did too.