No one ever identifies the robots as any sort of gendered pronoun (and in truth, they happen to be female, if one considers the being that drives them), and so it must be something else. Something Benji doesn't know about, and she puzzles a look across at the other woman before obediently moving into action by pinching out the flame with quick fingertips. Hands emptied, she goes to pick up the arm of the injured woman, and she moves compliant, in expected ways-- her head bows, hair curtaining her face, but her legs work beneath her when Benji goes to stand to help her up, arm across her shoulders.

Steph will be on the other side, and they'll move. Ahead of them, predawn has made the sky grey. Were they always outside? The hard cement floor of the room of Steph's memory gives way to less steady rubble and dirt and urban broken ground, and a wind harshly cold from the morning smarts their faces.

The Hudson river is a stagnant, gunmetal grey thing ahead of them. The geography may not be so familiar to Stephanie, or else it might be an inconsistency, moving towards the coast of Brooklyn instead of in the midst of Manhattan's midtown. There are docks and warehouses, a ghost town, and across the river, there's Staten Island, which is no longer the quiet, boring little suburban town it once was in more contemporary times. Stephanie sees a city, one in progress of being built, something new.

"Who is 'he'?" Benji asks, fine steam hitting the air on the exhale.