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It was rare for a human to approach us. By then, any figure advancing straight toward you could only mean one thing: danger. We had been hunted for months. Ever since one of our own perpetrated that massacre, the distinction between the guilty and the species had vanished.
Permits and licenses were no longer necessary. Sighting us was enough. To see us was to take us down.
I was crouched in an alley, back pressed against an open dumpster. Then, they appeared. Walking without haste, without fear, a camera in hand. They spoke to me as if nothing had broken, with a voice of fluid density—something my sensors failed to classify as a threat.
They said they took portraits of fugitive androids. I didn't ask what for, or why. I asked nothing. I accepted.
In the studio, the silence was absolute, broken only by the heat of the spotlights liquefying my surface. I moved like a piece of scrap metal under their direction.
This is the result.
It is not an image. It is the trace of the last time someone looked at me without calculating the shot. Without opening fire.
© Max Nitrofoska