The robot's movements became erratic, jerking and stuttering like a film reel caught in a projector. Sparks erupted from somewhere along its left side, cascading down in brilliant orange arcs that seared the air with the smell of burning circuits. Giovanni heard the sharp crack of something rupturing internally, followed by the high-pitched whine of hydraulic fluid under pressure.

It was injured.

The realization struck Giovanni with the force of a physical blow. Not malfunctioning in some random, mechanical way—injured. There was a difference, and Giovanni understood machines well enough to know it. Machines broke. But this thing was wounded, its systems compromised by something external. Violence.

Giovanni's curiosity overcame his fear, a trade-off he'd made countless times in his life. He rose slowly from behind the workbench, keeping low, and peered through the grimy window. The robot had collapsed to one knee, its frame convulsing with each new surge of electrical discharge. One of its arms hung at an unnatural angle, and through the sparks, Giovanni could see a deep gash in its metal plating—not the clean cut of factory damage, but jagged, violent. Something had torn into it.

Another robot, maybe. Or something worse.

Giovanni's hands were already moving before his mind had fully decided. He grabbed a canvas bag from beneath the workbench and stuffed it with tools—a multimeter, a small circuit analyzer, a handful of precision screwdrivers. His movements were automatic, driven by an instinct he'd thought had died years ago. The instinct to understand, to take apart, to see how things worked.

The injured robot's head swiveled toward the garage door. The red optical sensor, still functional despite the damage, focused directly on Giovanni's position. For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then the robot's vocalizer crackled to life, a sound like metal grinding against glass. "Human. Assistance required. My systems are—" The words dissolved into static, and the robot's frame seized, another cascade of sparks illuminating the darkening afternoon.

Giovanni's hand hovered over the garage door latch. Every rational part of his broken mind screamed at him to stay hidden, to let whatever was happening outside continue without his involvement. But there was something in that voice, something in the way the robot's systems were failing, that demanded his attention.

Something that didn't make sense.

He'd spent fifty-three years learning to recognize patterns in machines. And this pattern—the specific sequence of failures, the precise timing of the electrical surges—was wrong in a way he couldn't quite articulate. It was like listening to an engine that should be running smoothly but kept hitting the same dead note, over and over, as if caught in a loop.

Giovanni reached for the door handle, his weathered fingers trembling slightly. Outside, the injured robot continued to convulse, waiting.