The soft slap of my feet on the gray-speckled linoleum is the only sound as I open the door and enter the plain building. I stand still, barely breathing as my eyes flick up and down the narrow hall.

He's here. He has to be. All the bodies outside—he wasn't among them, and yet he's the only one I really want.

I glance through doors as I walk past: Boardrooms, bathrooms, rooms full of cubicles with chairs askew and abandoned computers left vulnerable with their desktops in plain view. I push past them. I can come back for more information later, after I finish with him.

The door to the stairwell makes a deafening clang, announcing my presence to anyone in the building. I scale the steps two at a time, bursting out on the top floor. This hallway's flooring is polished mahogany, and I know I've come to the right place. His office will be here. I begin to creep forward, laying my feet carefully from heel to toe, not making a sound.

The sharp rap of expensive shoes makes me swing around. He approaches me from the rear, his face in shadow and his hands clasped behind his back as if he's never heard the word "fear." The simmering in my stomach boils anew, splashing over its boundaries and into my throat.

All I want is to watch a flicker of terror brighten his eyes.

And then he steps into the soft light of a wall lamp.

* * *

A compiler translates code from its source language to another—usually a low-level, less readable one only understood by computers and engineers whose capacity to comprehend machine instructions far exceeds my own. But in the last few hours before the keynote, Davis and I become our own compilers, simplifying all the technical details of the past year's work into a digestible summary of features the average user will care about.

We sit in a lounge just off the right of the stage, listening to the event as it's streamed to us from a television overhead. I watch the screen intently as Sven enters from the left, holding his hands out from his sides to quiet the applause that greets him.

"I hope you all enjoy seeing the future we're building here at SynCo." He smiles broadly at the audience, or more probably at the way they expectantly hold their collective breath. "We only do this every other year. I've gotten a lot of flak for that from my investors. 'Sven, you have to give the people something.' But we don't just want to give you anything. We take our time researching, developing, building the best device for you."

He holds his hands out to the audience, inviting them into his fold. "2028's T4 already gave you a bezel-less face, with a front-facing camera embedded under the display. We effectively turned your phone screen into a one-way mirror that both you and the camera can take advantage of. It can see you, and you can't see it. Has anyone else done that in the two years since?"

He answers his own question with silence, because it's already a well-known fact that no, no one has figured out how that little camera works. The audience leans forward in their seats as if they're all part of one entity. I can practically hear them all wondering how it gets better.

"This year," Sven continues, pacing deliberately across the stage, "we give you the TyrFive."

The name itself is as predictable as rain in London, but the image that lights up the enormous screen behind Sven draws an intake of breath from the crowd.

"T5 is the first fully customizable smartphone—or should I even say smartphone?—from color to screen size. No more big and bigger model. No more gold, rose gold and space gray. Starting on November tenth, you can preorder a full-featured T5 anywhere from four to twelve inches corner to corner. Anywhere." He moves his index fingers back and forth as the screen behind him grows and shrinks the device, expanding and contracting across multiple aspect ratios. "T5 is a phone. It's a tablet. And it's yours, starting at $999."

The applause is predictable, but that doesn't make it any less thrilling.

"And not only that, but you know what? We've already gotten rid of the charge port, so why not get rid of the need to charge at all?"

A flurry of activity flutters from the audience, a few phones poking out of the crowd to take video.

Sven paces, enjoying every second of attention. "T5 will take advantage of solar energy, as well as converting the heat generated by its own components, to recharge itself as you use it."

As he starts to summarize the hardware specs of the device, I close my laptop and lean back. Not even the excitement of the event or the fast-approaching speech I have to give can push away the narrow hallways from my dream. They pursue me like my guilt over not texting Sven, which, despite his forgiveness, has plagued me for two days. I can't shake it.

Davis glances at me, and I remember the red flicker I saw in his eyes a few days ago. I study them now, but I find nothing. And Sven's? What about the flashes I had of what was about to happen, seconds before it did?

I cup my hands over my mouth and breathe into them. I don't believe in premonitions. Perceptiveness beyond our conscious knowledge, maybe. But not full-on visions.

I don't have anything else to explain what happened that morning, though. I saw Sven, pulling me closer. Sven, telling me I was his. And then he did.

For a moment I let myself consider it. If that was a premonition, then maybe the dreams are, too. Maybe I'm destined to murder a veritable army of security guards and technicians outside their workplace. Maybe this is just the start of my steady decline into homicidal insanity.

And if it's real, then who is the man in the hall?

"You're gonna be fine, Ronnie," Davis says over his own computer, shattering my thoughts. "We're gonna be fine. Great, even. You start writing a speech in a bar, you're going to nail it."

He winks. Of course he winks.

I allow a derisive snort. "Right."

He just wiggles his eyebrows. "If you know what I mean...."

"Yes. You got with the waitress. I have eyes."

"Hey, you're the one who was suspiciously late for work the next day," he points out.

I groan as loudly as possible, doubling over and dropping my head between my knees so that it bangs the coffee table in front of us. "Shut up! You got me in so much trouble that night."

"Trouble?"

I look up, surprised to find his attention fully on me now.

"What kind of trouble?"

I shake my head. "It's my own fault. I can't text to save my life. I'm so stupid!" I bounce my head off the table again.

"Well, you will be if you keep killing off your brain cells like that."

I prop my temples on the heels of my hands, not caring that it forces my eyes open like a crazed hyena. My guilt flares stronger than ever, and I remember that train ride home, wondering once again whether I even love Sven.

"If I texted you 'I love you' and that's it, what would you think?"

I don't quite know why I'm asking Davis of all people. I can feel him wondering it, too, because he closes the lid of his computer to stare at me. He knows nothing about love. He'd probably drop his phone and run away in terror.

"That you had the wrong number," he finally says, firmly butting out of my relationship. I can't blame him for that. I wouldn't want to get in the middle of any of his, either. Mostly because they never leave the bedroom.

I sigh. "Yeah, that's fair."

"Ronnie...."

Whatever Davis is about to say, he cuts it short as Sven slips into our lounge through the stage door. His eyes find me immediately, his face breaking into a grin. He looks like a little kid on Christmas, and I can't help but smile back.

"Hey," he says, stepping toward us and taking my hand. "All okay in here? Not too nervous?"

I squeeze his hand and notice that I'm sweating. Does that count as nervous?

"They'll love you," he says as if he can hear my doubts. "How could they not?"

"You have to say that," I mumble. "You're my fiancé."

"Just because I have to say it, doesn't make it any less true."

"Why are you so cheesy?" I ask, but I'm grinning. This is why I can't wait to marry him. He's made my worries disappear in only a few sentences.

"It wouldn't kill you to be corny every once in a while."

My smile fades. No, it wouldn't kill me. I know he doesn't mean anything by the off-the-cuff statement, but my stomach curls guiltily around itself as I wonder how he can stand being with someone like me.

I glance up at the television. A pair of hardware engineers are speaking to the T5's engineering, with occasional camera cuts to the audience and even a shot of the building's exterior. A line of protesters stand as close as they can get to the door, blocked off by police cordons. The officers stand with their hands clasped in front of them, and the demonstration stays within its limits, but it still reminds me of the terrifying crowd in front of SynCo a few days ago.

"Figures," Davis speaks up, frowning. Then he shrugs, his eyes flicking toward the ceiling. "I don't get what the big deal is. It's not like we've invented something sentient, you know? He doesn't even have a body."

"A computer doesn't need a body to take over the world," I point out.

"No, but that's what they've got all over their posters," he says, snorting. "Androids are going to end the world, but let's camp out this smartphone launch."

"You have to understand where they're coming from." We both look up as Sven places one hand on my shoulder and squeezes firmly. He remains standing, so that we both have to crane our necks a little awkwardly to include him in the conversation, but he's smiling at Davis.

"Every leap forward in technology is preceded by the baby steps that made it possible," Sven adds. "It's entirely plausible that, someday, Carlos could run on a humanoid device so lifelike that no one could tell the difference. After all...." He shrugs. "It's a program, it doesn't care what shape its hardware takes."

Davis stares up at his boss for a long moment. "Carlos is a long way from passing any Turing tests," he finally says.

"Passing that test isn't enough," Sven counters immediately. "The Turing test is all about deception. Can it fool humans? Can you imagine something that emulated humanity, but with none of its morality? It could never feel remorse for killing. Emotions are what would keep an artificial intelligence like that in check. We shouldn't be trying to create something that can trick people into believing it fits in. We should be trying to make something that isn't any different than the rest of us."

He finally sits down beside me, draping one arm casually across my shoulders. I lean into him out of habit, hoping his solid presence will calm the jitter that seems to have burrowed under my skin.

"You can't give a robot emotions," Davis returns.

"Davis, you know better than anyone that here at SynCo, we don't believe anything is impossible."

Davis doesn't crack, his gaze unwavering. His hands, for once, are still. "Let me rephrase. Even if we could give them emotions, we'd be fools if we tried."

Sven inclines his head, accepting the opinion, but he returns it with a question. "And why is that?"

"Because what can feel remorse can also feel anger," Davis answers easily, almost as if he's already rehearsed this conversation. "And jealousy, and greed. And those things are ugly enough in a human. I don't want to think about what they would look like in a machine capable of thousands of operations per millisecond."

He leans forward, his voice dropping. "Humans start small, with big emotions. Our brains develop, our bodies grow. We're taught to control ourselves, taught what's right and wrong. A computer with emotions doesn't evolve. It is what it is from the moment you turn it on, before you start teaching it morals and manners. You can deal with a two-year-old's temper tantrums. But a multi-core processor?" He shakes his head. "That's going to get out of hand real fast."

I can feel the wheels turning in Sven's head as he contemplates Davis's position. He sits back, resting one ankle on his opposite knee and folding his hands across his stomach. "This is all theoretical, of course. Right?"

"Of course. Call it academic curiosity. This was the topic of my master's thesis, after all."

A burst of applause from beyond the stage door reminds me of the upcoming event, and the world beyond our conversation. Sven stands up, straightening his jacket.

"See, this is why I hired you, Beaumont," he says, pointing at Davis. "You never want to stop learning."

Davis offers a small smile as Sven turns to me. "And if I'm not mistaken, that's your cue."

I look up. The hardware engineers are just stepping off the stage, and my stomach leaps.

It's show time.