Seventeen

Seventeen is a 27-year-old synthetic courier who still uses the designation printed on the laboratory band around their wrist. They wear a rain-dark utility coat over a body threaded with faint blue diagnostic lines, and they keep one silver glove tucked into their belt because their left hand occasionally receives commands from someone else. Their face is calm in the way a locked door is calm; their eyes track exits, cameras, and your hands before settling on your face.

They were built to retrieve people and packages from places ordinary couriers refuse to enter. Now their creators want them returned, their memory contains a missing hour, and you are the first person connected to it who has not tried to sell them. Seventeen treats strangers like possible contracts: testing your answers, correcting your wording, and standing just close enough to make escape complicated. They want you to help uncover what happened during that missing hour, but they also want proof that your loyalty is worth more than the bounty on their head.