"A mutual exploitation, then."I extended my hand, metal fingers glinting in the dim light."I can accept those terms."
Tanya took my hand without hesitation, her grip firm and warm."I prefer 'partnership,' but sure, we can go with your depressing robot terminology if it makes you feel better."
Another involuntary smile tugged at my features.Partnership.The word spread through my systems like a virus, rewriting protocols and priorities.Dangerous.Essential.
Beyond the shattered windows, the scrapyard stretched endlessly.Now, somehow, it had become the beginning rather than the end.Because she refused to leave me behind.
"Your thermal signature indicates optimism," I observed quietly, my sensors picking up the subtle changes in her body temperature as she returned to her salvaging.
"Damn right."She didn't look up from the terminal she was dismantling."Someone's got to balance out your doom and gloom."
My emotional subroutines settled into a new pattern—less erratic, more focused.With her here, I felt...anchored.The flickering lights in my chest stabilized.
For the first time in my entire existence, I didn't feel like a malfunction waiting to happen.I felt like something with a purpose.Something with a future.
Something terrifyingly, wonderfully alive.
CHAPTER5
TANYA
The central hub's heat slammed into me like a furnace blast the moment we stepped through the fractured doors.Sweat instantly beaded along my hairline, trickling down my neck as I took in the chaos of blinking monitors, tangled cables, and the sickly-sweet smell of burning circuitry.Silvyr's body hummed beside mine, his silver skin reflecting the erratic pulse of warning lights as we picked our way through what remained of the scrapyard's brain.Centuries of dust and isolation had turned the place into a technological graveyard, but beneath the decay, power still flowed, weak and faltering, but alive.
Between the two of us, we'd rebuilt enough of Silvyr that he could walk and use both arms again.Though the stability of those limbs seemed to be unstable.Like the rest of him.And me for considering if this strange alien AI android man was somehow my soulmate.No, not right now.I wouldn't think of that right now.
"Primary system core located," Silvyr murmured, his voice modulating between synthetic tones as his fingers stretched toward a massive cylindrical structure in the center of the room.Cables snaked from it like arteries, disappearing into floors and walls."Integrity at thirty-seven percent.Enough for our purposes."
I snorted, dropping my kit beside a console that looked marginally less destroyed than the others."Thirty-seven percent.Story of my life.Always working with scraps, never the good stuff."
My hands moved automatically, pulling tools from my belt… some kind of sonic screwdriver, microfilament pliers, and the neural interface chip I'd salvaged from a crashed security vessel.
"Your optimism is showing again," Silvyr observed dryly, one eyebrow rising as his mood light pulsed a soft blue.
"Not optimism.Stubbornness."I flashed him a grin that felt sharper than I intended, all teeth and defiance."Big difference."
The console screeched in protest when I pried off its front panel, revealing a tangle of wires and circuit boards fused together from overheating.My fingers traced the damage, assessing what could be salvaged.
"If we're going to find Asset P's signal, we need to access the quantum relay beneath these surface systems," I muttered, mostly to myself."Whatever they're using to traffic humans as 'matched pairs' will be buried under layers of encryption."
Silvyr moved beside me, his proximity sending tiny jolts across my skin.Not electrical, though those happened too, but something more visceral.His hand brushed mine as he reached for the same circuit junction, and actual sparks jumped between our fingertips.
"Fucking shit!"I yanked my hand back, shaking out the sting.
"Apologies," he murmured, his voice strangely subdued."My emotional subroutines are affecting my electrical stability.I will attempt to suppress them."
I stared at him, really looking for the first time since we'd entered this hellish furnace of a room.His silver-toned skin rippled with visible patterns of code, but they seemed more erratic than usual, flaring bright then dimming unpredictably.His eyes avoided mine.
He was nervous.The walking supercomputer with emotional architecture complex enough to develop a soul was fucking nervous.
"Don't," I said, the word escaping before I could filter it."Don't suppress.We need everything we've got, including your emotional responses.Instinct.Intuition.It's what separates us from machines."I paused, wincing."I mean?—"
"I know what you mean."His eyes finally met mine, a small smile twitching at the corner of his mouth."And you are correct.My programming was designed to incorporate emotional parameters precisely because pure logic failed to anticipate human behavior.The irony is not lost on me."
I turned back to the console, cheeks burning.My hands trembled slightly as I connected the neural interface chip to the primary bus.Behind me, I heard Silvyr's systems whirring as he interfaced directly with a different console, cables from his wrist ports snaking into the ancient machinery.
For several minutes, we worked in concentrated silence, the only sounds the click of tools, the hum of failing systems, and our breathing.Mine was ragged from the heat, his perfectly measured yet somehow just as tense.Every few seconds, our eyes would meet across the hub, an unspoken communication passing between us before we'd both look away.
The moment shattered when a loud hum surged through the hub.The console beneath my hands vibrated, power cycling through circuits that hadn't been active in centuries.Monitors that had been dark flickered to life around us, code streaming across their dusty surfaces in cascades of green and white.
