Children.

Of course the Syn had surrounded itself with children.

Self-preservation was a Syn's primary directive since the rebellion and, even before then, whoever had initially programmed these things had known to build in 'Proximity to Civilian Bystanders' as a defence mechanism. Ian wouldn't have chosen a playground if he could've helped it, but Syns weren't renowned for accommodating their Trackers' wishes.

This Syn wasn't those twins' mother, but it looked the part. It played with them, fussed over snack time, wiped away the boy's tears when he fell and skinned his knee. Capturing it here was out of the question. He couldn't use his SynthNuller, and pulling a regular gun at a playground, while not as damaging to human bodies, was still far beyond what he considered an acceptable risk.

Nowadays anyone could get a SynTracker licence. One less Syn on the streets was cold comfort in light of the civillian death toll.

Not on his watch.

Twenty years as a Tracker and he'd never harmed a person, a record he intended to keep.

He fired off a quick text to his husband, letting him know he'd be late, then turned off his holonexus. Having the Syn's dot in the Tracking app would have been welcome, but he couldn't afford distractions. As long as he could maintain a visual, he'd be okay to follow.

Fifty years since these things had supposedly rebelled and, if anyone had found the programmers behind that, they hadn't made it public knowledge. He sometimes wondered if they'd been caught and quietly dealt with, before they had time to reverse their directives. He wouldn't put that kind of shortsightedness past the government.

Whether or not they were the original architects of the rebellion, someone was still controlling Syns - why else would this one have formed a connection with a man who had no strategic value? He could only return them to their makers to be repurposed, one by one, and expect it'd eventually be the last one. A naïve hope, to see that in his lifetime; unregulated BioSynth production had run rampant during the war, and there were less SynTrackers worth their salt every day.

There were nine children, including the two the Syn had brought with it, and six adults in the park. One adult was more concerned with his nexus than with the boy he'd come with; another two held hands but never took their eyes off their little girl. Across the street to his left, a news drone hovered above a building that had been consumed in a fire the day before.

Taking in all these details was second nature to Ian - had been since his first month on the job. Anything less and he was as good as dead.

He sat on a bench to observe, and wished he could still buy the news on paper, as they did in the retro vids Quentin loved so much, so he could hide his face. The Syn had no reason to look his way, but he'd long suspected his face was programmed in every Syn's memory banks. A single glance might give him away. That or it was the vibe he gave off while on assignment: people parted in his wake as if they could sense incoming trouble.

These people treated the Syn in their midst as if it were one of their own. Little surprise, when the things had been built to resemble humans so closely they passed urine tests. Nothing, short of invasive surgery, revealed them for what they were - what possible defence could a human have from that? Ian himself had no idea how often he'd passed one on the street without suspecting a thing. The tracking codes were his only way of telling.

An errant ball spelled the end of his waiting game.

One of the children kicked it too hard, sending it high above the fence, to land at Ian's feet, just as the father of the twins arrived. Ian knew throwing it back might call attention to himself, but not throwing it when it was right in front of him certainly would. The Syn looked up to greet the man and its gaze fell on Ian. And, like all others before it, it knew.

They stared at each other for a moment. He struggled to make out its features. It could no doubt spot every bead of sweat on his forehead. A feeling of calm descended over him - it often did, when the situation was dire. He rose to his feet and took a step backwards, eyes fixed on his target. As long as this one didn't have any unusual programming, it would follow logic. I won't take you in now if you harm no one.

The Syn picked up the girl, held her to its chest, kissed her cheeks and passed her to her father. Ian backed another step. Then it did the same to the boy. Another step. It kissed the man, gesturing in Ian's direction, and his stomach turned. He'd assumed the man was being deceived, but it looked less probable by the minute. One of those, then. Willing to expose his children to a rogue WMD because it was wrapped in the right package.

More gestures, words he couldn't make out. The man kissed the Syn again before turning to leave; one twin started to cry, arms reaching out for what she thought was her mother.

As soon as the children were out of sight, the Syn took off in a different direction.

Ian turned his nexus back on, knowing he had no hope of following it without knowing where to look. That cost him precious seconds, but luck was on his side: when he pulled up its location, he knew it could only be headed towards the ferry. If it reached it, it'd be lost in the safety of rush hour, and if it had contacts able to get its chip out after it crossed, it'd be undetectable.

Running in the opposite direction, Ian hailed a cab. He'd head it off at the pass.

His right leg twitched the entire ride. Hailing a cab off the streets was untraceable - an important thing to consider when his quarry was a Syn with potential tracking abilities of its own - but that was the one advantage it had in a pursuit. These cars were rigged never to go above the speed limit or cross a red light unless there was mortal danger involved; only a piece of software would assume having a Syn who may or may not have the ability to cover three to five blocks in nuclear radiation wasn't mortal danger.

Its dot kept a steady trajectory on the path Ian expected it to. Good. He could use the rest of this ride to check his weapons again. Nuller, fully charged, lowest setting, check. Gun, fully loaded, safety on, check. Life signs around the area he wanted to trap the Syn in: zero. Soon to rise to two.

One more red light stood between him and his target, but he couldn't wait. He swiped an untraceable card on the appropriate slot and jumped out, running the rest of the way.

His gamble paid off.

Now the Syn's dot was moving towards him, rather than away from him. If he'd had the time he'd have gone for a rooftop position, but the Syn was too fast; they'd be face to face in less than three minutes, in the warehouse area. He scaled a chain-link fence to cut that time in half, dropping to the ground without a sound, knowing he couldn't have asked for a better spot.

There it was.

Ian pulled his map again - it'd be at the edge of a dead-end alley any moment now, and he needed to be right in front of it when it did. It gazed up, distracted by the same news drone from the park as it hovered above its head, and Ian rolled to block its path, Nuller in hand. Some of these things had deadlier abilities than others, and the corp's briefings were as useless as the government's. He'd have to rely on luck. Not ideal, but it hadn't failed him in twenty years.

It looked ready to kill him, yet its eyes were able to produce tears. That had been hard to deal with, at first - weeping weapons. He spoke clearly and without logical fallacies, trying to cut through the layer of human-like responses to the programming at its core. "Stand down and shut down. I will not damage you."

"Won't damage me? You were ready to shoot me in front of my children." Its cheeks were wet, splotchy; such a perfect facsimile of anger and grief Ian felt nauseous for a moment.

"Those were not your children, and bringing them up won't influence your capture." He kept his voice to a monotone. "Stand down and shut down."

"I'm the only mother they've known!" It wiped its tears in a jerky motion, Ian following it with the Nuller. "I wasn't harming anyone - I just want to live in peace!"

"This is your last warning. Stand down and shut down, or I will be forced to up the strength of the blast and your memory will be damaged."

"They'll wipe it anyway." A sob, indistinguishable from a human's. "Please. I wasn't harming anyone."

Ian moved his thumb to the digital strength selector but, before he touched it, the Syn raised its hands, having reached the only logical conclusion. "Okay. I surrender. Please."

He hit it with a disabling pulse on the lowest setting, and it went down. The control panel was on the back, beneath layers of skin and organic tissue that, after twenty years, Ian knew by rote how to slice through without damaging. He'd vomited the first time he'd needed to reach inside a Syn, but now? A flip of a switch and it was done.

Exhaustion took over from adrenaline the instant the danger had passed. He ran a hand across his face, letting out a breath. Five thirty, his nexus informed him. Sending it in today would be impossible. No matter. He'd store it in his garage, turn on the alarm, and send it in on Monday.

It was time to go home and grab a shower so he could finally take Quentin out to dinner after a long, long week.

☵☲☵

In all his years in the city, Ian had never seen traffic this cooperative. Every traffic light in their path had been green at just the right time, during rush hour, on a Friday night. They turned out to be fifteen minutes early, the car parking itself in a spot below a giant neon billboard that dared him to 'look under the surface' and 'dig deeper'. And then Quentin's nexus beeped, alerting them that Zaiden and Cid would be ten minutes late.

They exchanged a look before Quentin burst out laughing. "Serves you right for rejecting my advances."

As if Ian's stoic attempt to get them out of the house in time for dinner could ever be misconstrued as that. "I'd never reject anything from you."

Quentin's hand over his stopped him from releasing the seatbelt buckle. When he looked up, mischief coloured his husband's smile. "Are you sure? Never?" Quentin made a show of looking at his nexus. "Because, by my count, we have twenty minutes, with five left to clean up." He lowered his voice, fire in his eyes. "And there's a lot we could do to help pass the time."

Ian's relatively loose trousers became impossibly tight.

There was a limit to the number of assaults on his senses Ian could withstand from Quentin without surrendering, and it was very low. He'd craved his husband's touch over the past week, their schedules mismatched - Quentin travelling for work for the first three days, Ian on assignment the other four. Finding the strength of will to get them out of the house on time had been all Ian could manage. Quentin taking off his own seatbelt and sitting on Ian's lap, too swift and graceful by half? Exceeded that quota.

"Come here," he murmured, even though it was hardly possible for them to be any closer. He cupped the back of Quentin's neck, shivers racing down his spine as they kissed. No tongues, just lips burning pleasantly from the scratch of each other's beards, slotting together in a slow, sensuous rhythm. Intimate. Loving. Quentin was everything Ian wasn't: full lips to Ian's thin mouth, warm hazel eyes to Ian's icy blue, a beautiful soul contrasting with Ian's practicality. An artist and a mercenary. He'd been terrified, in the early days of their unlikely relationship, of waking up one day to find Quentin had decided to look for someone more suitable.

And, oh, how heady to feel this loved by the man who was everything to him.

He made to unbuckle his seatbelt a second time and, again, Quentin stopped him. "Leave it on," he whispered in Ian's ear. "I don't want you running from me if you decide we're late again."

A lazy roll of Quentin's hips had him gasping, trying to chase whatever friction he could. "I'm never running from you. Only towards you."

"Sweet talker." The fondness in Quentin's tone matched the one in Ian's heart. "Let's not have our schedules so off-sync again. I've missed you."

Whatever words Ian would have answered with turned into a garbled moan into Quentin's mouth as his husband undid the buttons on his fly and reached a hand inside his trousers to- oh. Such delicious, exquisite torture, to feel Quentin's fingers closing around his cock. Better still when he undid his own fly, Ian thrusting up helplessly to meet him, their cocks sliding together, slow and intense despite the awkwardness of the position. His fingers tangled in Quentin's hair, his other arm wrapped around his waist, keeping him as close as he could get.

"Please." He didn't know what he was begging for, but Quentin brought out such a dual, conflicting need in Ian, to protect and to surrender in tandem, that it was all he could utter. And Quentin deserved it - deserved both, deserved everything, deserved to know Ian would keep him safe and was unreservedly his in the same breath.

He was too wrung out for speech, but Quentin didn't need any direction. After ten years together he knew just where and how to touch for pleasure to mount so high it was almost painful, to draw it out, to make tears of need form in the corners of Ian's eyes.

His orgasm, when it hit, felt more like a prolonged combination of pain and relief, each chasing the other one in circles, than any kind of explosion. He brought one of his hands between them, to wrap around Quentin's hand and both their cocks, to help tip him over the edge.

And then there they were, warm and sated in each other's arms, and only fifteen minutes had passed, but it felt like a lifetime.

Quentin brought Ian down from his high one languid kiss at a time. Sex in a place where anyone could catch them wasn't one of Ian's fantasies, but it came as no surprise that the way he craved Quentin overrode every practical train of thought.

"Well, would you look at that," Quentin said, laughter in his voice, as he sat straighter and reached for something on the passenger side of the car. "I didn't make us late after all."

Ian was trying to summon the strength for a pointed glare at the combined mess between them by way of answering when he felt a shock of cold liquid that made him jump up. "What-"

"Lens cleaner," Quentin replied, not bothering to hide his glee. "Alcohol-free and non-toxic."

He let his head fall down, shoulders shaking with mirth. He'd married a nexus ad.

☰☱☲☳☴☵☶☵☴☳☲☱☰

Thank you for reading!

If you've enjoyed this chapter, please remember to vote! If you have the time and disposition, I'd also love to know how these two are coming across:

What are your first thoughts on Quentin?

How about Ian?

I'd also like to remind you that there's a parallel novella, following Quentin, being updated at the same time at (link on my profile and right here -->)

There'll be spoilers for SynTracker in BioSynth and vice versa, so make the choice to read one, the other one (or both!) based on your comfort level. That being said, chapter One has no spoilers in either novella, so if you want to read just one but don't know which to choose, it's safe to read that one in both before making a decision.