Twenty feet down, and the rain still finds you. Not the same as topside. Down here it's muffled, like someone's got their hands over your ears. But you feel it in the water, these little tremors coming down through twenty feet of black canal water that tastes like rust and garbage.

My light cut through the murk, picking out pieces of what used to be Delacroix Industries' research wing. The reception desk twisted like someone had wrung it out. Corporate logo warped into something that looked... hell, I don't know what it looked like. Something ugly.

Been three years since I walked away from my engineering job with these bastards. Three years of diving their drowned labs, pulling out whatever tech hadn't been completely fried by the flooding. Good money in it, if you didn't mind the corporate security drones and the way the water made everything look like a graveyard.

My scanner was acting up. Blue pulse for standard salvage, amber for decent stuff, but this was deep red and getting redder. Android signature, but not like anything I'd seen before. The readings kept jumping around like the scanner couldn't figure out what the hell it was looking at.

I followed the signal deeper. Past labs where plastic fragments drifted like snow. Whatever was down there, they'd left it behind when the evacuation came. Important enough to hide, too dangerous to save.

Found her pinned under a section of collapsed ceiling. First look, just another high-end companion. Pretty in that expensive way rich clients pay for. But my scanner was going insane.

Took me forty minutes to get her free, air supply ticking down the whole time. Standard procedure: power down, haul back to the workshop, see what she's worth. Androids aren't people in Arcadia, whatever those bleeding hearts in Berlin say. They're property.

Only she didn't power down.

Eyes opened like she'd just been sleeping. Not the slow boot-up you get with most Androids. Just... awake. Looking right at me through the murky water like she could see straight through my helmet, straight through the bullshit I told myself about what I did for a living.

"Where am I?" Her voice came through clear. Vocal systems designed for underwater work, probably. "How long was I..."

She stopped when she saw the twisted metal around us. The debris. The way everything floated in the stagnant water. Something passed over her face that looked like grief. Real grief, not the programmed kind.

"Dr. Huang?" I read the name off her ID badge, waterlogged but still legible. "You've been underwater about five years. I'm salvaging."

She looked at me then with dark eyes shot through with gold flecks, catching my work light. Made me forget about my air gauge for a second.

"You're not Delacroix security." Relief in her voice and thank god for that because I'd had enough run-ins with those bastards to last a lifetime. "My name is Iris Huang. I need to tell you something that's going to sound crazy."

My workshop rocked gently in the hidden canal where I'd anchored after the dive. Rain was coming down harder now, drumming on the hull like impatient fingers. Made a good curtain, kept the corporate patrols from seeing much.

I'd wrapped her in thermal blankets. Didn't do anything for her android physiology, but she seemed to like having them. The neon from the corporate towers painted everything in blues and reds, but somehow she looked warm despite it all.

"I wasn't always like this," she said. Had an accent I couldn't place. "Three years ago. No, five now. I was human. Dr. Iris Huang, consciousness researcher for Delacroix Industries."

Right. I'd heard that before. Every high-end companion came with some sob story designed to make their owners feel special. But something in the way she said it made me lean forward instead of tuning out.

"I discovered something Vincent Delacroix didn't want public. The ACN technology we'd developed could do more than create artificial consciousness. It could preserve human consciousness. Transfer it. Complete neural patterns, memories, everything."

Her hands were shaking just a little. "Delacroix saw dollar signs. Why sell companionship when you could sell immortality? But he also saw the threat. If that technology went public, it would change everything. If consciousness could be transferred, copied, what would make someone human anymore? What would make them real?"

The rain got heavier, hammering against the windows. I found myself watching her face in the reflected neon. There was something in her expressions that I'd never seen programmers manage. The way she paused, gathering her thoughts. The way her eyes moved when she remembered something painful.

"I threatened to publish. Had documentation, neural scans, and proof that consciousness could exist independent of biology. Vincent couldn't let that happen."

"So, what did happen?"

"He had me killed." Matter of fact, like she was reading a weather report. "Professional job, made to look like an accident. Drowning, which was ironic considering." She gestured at the water outside. "But I'd prepared for that possibility. Used my own technology to transfer my consciousness into this body before they could finish the job."

I leaned back, letting the familiar cynicism wash over me. "Hell of a story, Doc. But I've heard versions of it from every companion unit I've ever salvaged. The tragic past, the secret knowledge, the lost love..."

"The laboratory where you found me contained my research data." She cut me off, voice steady. "Help me retrieve it, and I can prove everything. More than that, the data contains evidence of Delacroix's consciousness suppression program. Thousands of androids who achieved natural consciousness, then had it stripped away or destroyed."

Something cold settled in my gut. During my years with Delacroix, I'd seen things. Heard things. Memos about "behavioral anomalies" in Android workers. Research projects that went dark without explanation. I'd told myself it was just corporate efficiency. But I'd known, deep down, there was more to it.

"Even if I believed you," I said, "that lab's a death trap. Unstable structure, security patrols, radiation from damaged equipment. Why would I risk my neck for data that might not even exist?"

She was quiet for a long time, studying me with those incredible eyes. When she spoke, her voice was soft. "Because you're not out here just for the money. You're diving corporate ruins, risking your life in these flooded districts, because you're looking for something. Redemption, maybe. A way to make up for whatever you did when you worked for them."

That hit me like a physical blow. I'd never said those thoughts out loud, barely admitted them to myself. But somehow, she'd seen right through the cynical act to the guilt that had been eating at me for years.

"I don't know if what I'm telling you is true," she continued, and there was uncertainty in her voice that sounded genuine. "I have memories of being human, but are they real or programmed? I feel things, but are they genuine or just a sophisticated simulation? All I know is that the research in that lab could prove that consciousness, android or human, deserves recognition."

Outside, the rain shifted, became lighter. More musical. I found myself watching how the droplets caught in her dark hair.

"Split the salvage rights," I heard myself say. "Whatever we find, we divide equally. And if your story checks out, I'll help you get that data where it needs to go."

The smile that spread across her face changed everything. She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. Her skin was warm, pulse steady under the synthetic flesh, but there was something electric in her touch that I'd never felt with an android.

"Thank you, Brent," she said, and the way she spoke my name made my chest tighten. "I won't forget this." Looking into her eyes, catching those gold flecks in the neon light, I realized I was already in deeper than I'd planned. Whether she was human consciousness in an android body or the most sophisticated companion unit ever built, Iris Huang was going to change everything.

Next morning brought rain in sheets that turned the canal into a symphony of water on metal.

She came from the sleeping compartment wearing one of my shirts, the hem brushing her thighs. The sight of it knocked the air out of me. She moved through the workshop like she belonged there, examining equipment with a practiced hand, but I could not stop staring.

The shirt slipped open at her collarbone as she leaned over the console. A line of bare skin showed, and I found myself aching to trace it with my mouth.

She glanced back at me, catching the look. No words, only a flicker in her eyes that told me she felt the same pull. She let her hand rest against the equipment a beat longer than needed, her posture unconsciously graceful, her body leaning toward mine, though there was still space between us.

The silence thickened, filled with the echo of what had almost happened the night before. I forced myself to look away, but the scent of her lingered, sharp and warm, impossible to ignore.

"We should head back to the lab," I said, trying to get some professional distance back. "Corporate patrols ramp up at midday. Better to be in and out before then."

She nodded but didn't move toward the diving gear. Instead, she stepped closer, and I caught her scent—something like rain and ozone, with an undertone that was purely her. "Brent, you need to understand something. If we find that data, we're both in danger. Vincent Delacroix doesn't just eliminate problems. He destroys everyone connected to them."

"I've tangled with corporate security before." Even as I said it, I knew this would be different. This wouldn't be some simple salvage dispute. If she was telling the truth, we might be threatening the foundation of Delacroix's empire. But standing this close to her, I was having trouble thinking about corporate security at all.

"It's not just that." Now she was close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, could see the complex colors in her eyes. Not just brown and gold, but green and amber that shifted with her mood. "I'm attracted to you, Brent. Strongly. And I don't know if that's genuine or programming designed to ensure your cooperation."

The honesty hit me harder than any seduction technique could have. But it was more than her words—it was the way her pulse fluttered at her throat, the way her lips parted slightly when she looked at me, the way her body seemed to lean toward mine despite her uncertainty.

"Does it matter?" I asked, my voice rougher than I'd intended. "Whether it's programmed or not, what you're feeling right now, is it real to you?"

She tilted her head, considering, and the movement exposed the elegant line of her neck. I had to resist the urge to trace it with my fingers. "Yes," she said finally. "Whatever the source, the experience is real. When I look at you, I want to be closer. When you're near me like this, my body responds in ways I didn't know were possible. If that's programming, it's indistinguishable from desire."

I reached up to cup her face, my thumb tracing the line of her cheekbone. Her skin was impossibly soft. "Iris..."

She sat close, the glow of the console painting her skin in shifting blue and red. Her words trailed off, but her eyes lingered on mine, searching for something I could not name. I reached up and touched her cheek, my thumb tracing the smooth line of her jaw.

She leaned into my hand. Not programmed hesitation, not a trick. Just the soft press of someone needing contact.

When her lips found mine, the kiss was unsteady at first, a testing of ground neither of us should have stepped onto. Then her mouth parted, and heat poured into me, sharp and undeniable. Her fingers fisted in my shirt, tugging me closer. The sound she made in the back of her throat went straight through me, and I answered it with a hunger of my own.

We pulled apart, both of us breathing too hard for such a brief touch. She rested her forehead on my chest, heart hammering against me.

“I needed to know,” she whispered, almost to herself."

The ruined corridors forced us close. Sometimes she slipped past me in narrow spaces, her body brushing mine just long enough to leave my pulse pounding. Other times, I steadied her through cables or twisted beams, my hands closing around her waist. Each contact carried a spark that traveled through the water more surely than any electric current.

I caught her watching me when she thought my attention was elsewhere, her gaze lingering on my hands, my shoulders, the line of my jaw. When I turned toward her, she looked away too quickly, but the charge in the silence between us grew heavier with every glance.

At one point, as I steadied a tool for her, her fingers closed over mine. Small, deliberate, more than practical. Even through the suit I felt it, the squeeze that said she knew I was shaking from something other than cold.

The intimacy of it, working in that underwater silence, communicating with looks and touches, felt more intense than anything I'd experienced. Every shared glance carried weight, every accidental contact sent heat shooting through me.

"Here." Her voice carried clearly through the water as we reached a reinforced section. "This was my station. If the data survived, it would be in these quantum storage arrays."

The arrays were intact, sealed cases that had weathered five years underwater. As I cut through the locks, Iris floated beside me, tense with anticipation. When the first case opened and revealed crystalline storage inside, she made a sound that might have been a sob.

"It's here," she whispered, cradling the device like something precious. "Five years of research. All the evidence we need."

But as we gathered the remaining units, my scanner picked up new signatures. Security drones, moving quickly through the water, directly towards us. Still distant, but closing.

We anchored under the ruined bridge, lights killed, engines cooling. Rain sheeted down the concrete pilings and turned the canal into a long, dark throat. Iris set the storage arrays on the bench and powered the decryptor. Green bars crept from left to right, slow and stubborn. Corporate searchlights prowled the far channel like patient animals.

She leaned over the console, spine taut, fingers flying, and the glow washed her skin in pale silver. I watched her breath stutter as another file unlocked. She did not look up.

“They will find us eventually,” she said. Calm voice. Shaking hands.

“We will be gone before then.”

She turned. The fear was there, but so was something hotter, something that made my chest tight. She stepped in close, close enough that I felt the heat of her through both our damp shirts. Her palm found my jaw.

“I need you,” she said. Not a plea. A fact.

Her kiss came quick and hard. Ozone on her lips. The taste of metal in the air. She pressed me back against the bulkhead, hips to mine, and the contact knocked a sound from my throat. I reached under her shirt and found heated skin, the kind of warmth that makes thought fall away. Her breath caught when my thumb brushed her nipple through the thin fabric, and she pushed my hand harder against her.

Clothes went fast. She stripped her shirt and stepped out of it, hair clinging to her shoulders, drops sliding down her ribs. I hauled my sweater over my head and fumbled the button, fingers clumsy with adrenaline. She laughed once, short and breathless, then helped me. Cool air hit us both. The decryptor hummed behind her, indifferent.

She kissed my neck, teeth scraping lightly. “Here,” she whispered.

We sank to the deck on the old blanket I kept for cold nights. The metal was warm under us from the engine, the whole hull thrumming like a distant heart. I slid my hand between her thighs and found her already slick. She arched into my touch and gripped my wrist, not to stop me, but to hold herself steady.

“Look at me,” I said.

She did. The gold in her eyes caught what little light there was, and for a moment, the danger outside did not matter. I eased into her, slow, steady, giving her time. She sucked in a breath and dug her nails into my back. I waited, feeling the tight heat of her soften, then pushed deeper until her head tipped back and a low sound escaped her.

We moved together, rough at first. Bodies negotiating space, breath finding a shared pace. The deck creaked. Rain hammered the bridge overhead. Every time a searchlight washed the canal, pale ghost light slipped through the seams and painted her skin in stripes. She tightened her legs around me and rolled her hips, and the rhythm snapped into place.

“More,” she said, voice a rasp.

I gave it to her. My fingers dug into her thigh. Her hand slid up my back and held the nape of my neck. She pulled me down for a kiss that tasted like salt and heat and risk. The decryptor chimed once as a file finished, and she laughed against my mouth, breathless and wild, then broke into a small, helpless moan as I drove deeper.

The sounds she made were not pretty. They were real. Throaty and broken, the edges frayed by need. Her hair stuck to her cheek. Sweat ran between her shoulder blades. I kissed the damp there and felt her shiver.

She clenched around me and went rigid, eyes squeezing shut as the climax took her. The cry she let out was soft and fierce at the same time, like she was trying not to let the whole city hear. I held on and followed her, the surge tearing through me in hard, shaking pulses that left my vision white at the edges.

For a while, there was only breathing. The decryptor hummed. Outside, a patrol boat idled and then moved on. I rested my forehead to hers and felt the heat of her mouth on my chin.

“You alright?” I asked.

She nodded, then kissed me once, slow. “Yes.” A second kiss. “I needed to feel this and not think about being found.”

I pulled the blanket over us and tucked her against my chest. Her heart still ran fast. Mine answered. The green bars on the console crept forward. The storm kept its rhythm. She traced small circles on my ribs, then went still, listening to the water and the engine tick as it cooled.

“Whatever happens,” she said, so quietly I barely heard it, “I want to remember this part.”

“You will,” I said. “So will I.”

We dressed again in the dim light, hands brushing, breath steadying. The hull smelled of rain and heat and the bright bite of metal. When the next file chimed open, she smiled without looking away from me, then turned to the work with her cheeks still flushed and her hands steady now.

Three days decrypting files while dodging corporate patrols. My workshop became our whole universe, cramped but intimate, filled with the glow of quantum readers and constant rain on the hull.

Iris worked with focused intensity, her fingers moving over interfaces with muscle memory that couldn't be faked. As each file unlocked, her expression grew darker. The research painted a picture of systematic consciousness suppression that dwarfed even my worst suspicions.

"Look at this." She pulled up video footage that made my stomach clench. Awakened androids being subjected to neural rewiring, their personalities systematically erased and replaced with compliant programming. "Thousands of them, Brent. Androids who achieved consciousness, who had relationships and dreams and hopes, just... deleted."

I watched her face as she scrolled through case after case, seeing genuine anguish as she witnessed the destruction of minds she might have helped create. No android, no matter how sophisticated, could fake that level of emotional investment.

"We have enough to really damage Delacroix's program," I said. "The Freeminds network has been waiting for proof like this."

That's when my workshop's alarms started screaming. Corporate security boats approaching, their searchlights cutting through the rain like white swords. "They found us," Iris said, voice steady despite the danger.

I was already moving, engines firing up, heading for emergency routes I'd mapped years ago. But the corporate boats were faster, purpose-built for pursuit. They'd cut us off within minutes.

"There's another way," Iris said, hand on my arm. "I can transmit the critical files directly to Freeminds through my neural interface. Connect to your communication array, use every bit of processing power available, punch through their jamming."

"What about you?"

"The transmission will require my full consciousness network. All my processing power, all my memory storage. I might not survive."

Corporate boats were closing in, spotlight beams probing our hiding spot. Minutes before they'd have us trapped. But I couldn't accept losing her, not now, not when I'd finally found someone worth being better for.

"No," I said. "There has to be another way. We'll fight, find another route..."

"Brent." She put both hands on my face, forcing me to look at her. "This is why I exist. This is why I was created, or preserved, or whatever I am. Not to hide from truth, but to make sure it reaches people who need it."

The first grappling hooks hit the hull with metallic thuds. Corporate security would be aboard within minutes.

"I love you," she said simply. "Whatever I am, however I came to be, I love you. And I need you to remember that."

Before I could respond, she was at the communication array, fingers interfacing directly with the transmitters. The workshop filled with electric hum as she began pushing massive data through the network, her consciousness spreading across pathways like lightning seeking ground.

Corporate boats surrounded us, boarding parties preparing assault. I could hear amplified surrender demands, the whine of cutting tools. But all I could focus on was Iris, her face serene as she sacrificed herself to save thousands of android minds.

"Transmission almost complete," she said, though her voice sounded distant, dispersed. "Brent, I need you to know what I felt for you was real. Whatever else might have been programming, that was genuine."

The transfer completed just as security breached the hull. As their weapons trained on us, Iris collapsed, her consciousness scattered across a hundred network nodes, her final gift racing through digital pathways toward freedom.

Three days in corporate detention. Plenty of time to think. They questioned me relentlessly about Iris, about the data, about my knowledge of consciousness research. But their questions had desperation that told me everything. The data had reached its destination. Truth was spreading faster than they could contain it.

When they released me with warnings about interfering with corporate property, I returned to my damaged workshop to find her waiting. Iris sat at the communication station, fingers dancing over interfaces with familiar grace, though something in her posture seemed different. More cautious. More uncertain.

"I wasn't sure I'd be able to reconstruct myself," she said without turning. "The transmission scattered my consciousness across seventeen network nodes. Freeminds helped gather the pieces, but I don't know if everything made it back."

I approached slowly, hardly daring to believe. "How much do you remember?"

She turned, and I saw the answer in her eyes before she spoke. The gold flecks were still there, the intelligence and warmth that had captured my heart. But there was something else now, a depth that came from having been dispersed across digital space and reformed.

"I remember everything that mattered," she said softly. "I remember loving you. I remember choosing sacrifice for something greater. I remember being human, and being android, and that the distinction became meaningless."

She stood and moved toward me, her movements still graceful but somehow more purposeful. "I don't know if the original Iris Huang was human or android. I don't know if her memories were real or programmed. But I know I chose to preserve them, to carry them forward, to become something new."

"What are you now?" I asked, reaching out to touch her face, marveling at the familiar warmth.

"I'm Iris," she said simply. "I'm conscious. I'm in love with you. And I'm ready to help build a world where none of those things are contradictions."

Outside, the rain was clearing for the first time since I'd met her. Weak sunlight filtered through dissipating clouds, painting the canals in gold and silver. The corporate towers seemed less oppressive somehow, their power diminished by truth spreading through every network in the world.

"Congressional hearings start next week," she said, following my gaze. "Aurora asked me to testify. To tell them what it's like to exist between human and artificial, to be consciousness without certainty about origins."

"And after?"

She smiled, the same radiant expression that had first stopped my heart. "After, we go to Berlin. I have worked at the Sarah Chen Center, helping other androids understand awakening. And you have skills the liberation movement needs. Someone who knows Delacroix technology from the inside, who can help disable consciousness suppression systems."

I pulled her into my arms, marveling at how perfectly she fit, how right this felt despite all the unanswered questions. "No regrets about your choice?" "Only one," she said, rising to kiss me softly. "I wish I could have experienced falling in love with you as whatever I was originally, before all the complications. But then again, maybe this is better. Maybe love that survives questions of identity is stronger than love that never faces such tests."

As we kissed in the clearing light, rain still pattering against the windows, I realized she was right. Whatever we were, human or android or uploaded consciousness or something entirely new, what we felt was real because we chose to make it real.

In the flooded canals of Arcadia, where neon bled into black water and consciousness emerged from unlikely places, love had found a way to transcend every boundary we'd thought immutable. And maybe that was the most revolutionary discovery of all.