“You know,” Josh starts when he notices Markus’ presence. “I haven’t just… looked at the city since I arrived to Jericho. I used to see it all the time from the university.”

And Markus wants to ask; he wants to know more about Josh, but he knows he shouldn’t push for it. There are things that should stay in the past. But if Josh offers the information, he’s going to listen.

After all, that’s why they’re here, right? To make it better for their peers, so they don’t have to go through the same things they had to.

Slowly, Josh rises from the plank and turns around to face Markus. “Things are going to change, no matter what we do today. Detroit won’t be the same place as before.”

“No, it won’t,” Markus agrees, and watches as Josh sits down heavily on the ratty armchair. Markus wonders if he’s finally ready to stop fighting off change.

“I’m aware of what this can escalate to,” Josh says. “I was teaching history. At the university.”

Against his better judgment, Markus asks, “What happened?”

Josh hums, and looks out to the city once more. But before Markus has time to apologize for the intrusive question, he starts speaking.

“It was late; I just finished my last class. I was about to go back to the other building where the android storage area was.” He shakes his head. “Funny, how I never thought about how fucked up our situation was. Anyway. There were three guys. They were drunk. They just wanted to pick a fight no matter what, and I was right there.” He unconsciously smooths a hand over his chest, where – Markus guesses – there’s still a scar or a dent under his clothes. Suddenly, Markus feels an impulse in his wires; he’s overwhelmed with the want to reach out. He doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead, which doesn’t sound right, and it doesn’t change what Josh had to go through anyway.

“What about you?” Josh’s dark, intense eyes are back on Markus, and he couldn’t look away, even if he wanted to. “You haven’t said much about yourself since you came to Jericho.”

And Markus knows what Josh thinks as they look into each other’s eyes. Androids don’t come with heterochromia. There’s still a phantom pain behind his eye where the bullet went through. He thinks it’ll never cease.

“I was caring for an old man… he was like a father to me. He died in my arms.” The painful images of that night flash on Markus’s HUD, uncontrollably. “The police thought I did it. They shot me. I woke up in a junkyard. I thought I was going to die.”

He can never forget; never forgets the pain he woke up in, the fear he felt, but something was in him. He wanted to live, desperately so. He thought he was going to die, but he never felt so alive before.

Josh steps closer; so close that Markus is able to detect the steady rhythm of his thirium pump. Cool, tentative fingers touch his hand, asking to open a connection.

And Markus lets the synthskin recede from his own hand and lets himself to be seen for the first time in his life.