The girl scavenged in silence while Vyomika sat against the wall, watching her small hands move with calculated precision—checking pockets, peeling old tape from wires, prying open rusted cans without making a sound. She worked like she'd done this a thousand times.
Survival wasn't instinct here. It was culture.
They hadn't exchanged names. That seemed unnecessary in a place where most things didn't last long enough to need labels.
At some point, the girl tossed Vyomika a foil-wrapped nutrient bar—expired, partially crushed, but still sealed.
> "Eat slow. Your gut's probably not used to slum food."
Vyomika hesitated. Her body responded before her mind could object—opening the wrapper, chewing, swallowing. The flavor was processed metal and artificial sugar.
The girl sat beside her now. Not close. Just near enough to monitor.
> "You don't remember anything, do you?"
Vyomika shook her head. "No. Just fragments. Noise. My name. That's all."
> "You're not from here. You don't smell like this place."
She didn't ask how she smelled. She didn't want to know.
Silence stretched again, the kind that didn't need to be filled.
Then—a vibration in the air.
Faint. Low-frequency. Like distant thunder caught in a steel drum.
The girl tensed, head tilting slightly. Predator reflex.
> "Down."
Vyomika followed without question, dropping to the floor behind a stack of crates just before a pulse of light swept across the shack's entrance. The light wasn't natural. It stuttered in rhythm—sharp, clinical.
Through a gap in the plastic sheet above, Vyomika saw it:
A Nexatech drone—Model 7E-PRIME. Long-range sensors. Adaptive targeting AI.
Heat-mapped.
Scanning.
> "What is it scanning for?" Vyomika whispered.
> "Synthetics," the girl said grimly. "Like you."
Her voice wasn't cruel. Just factual.
> "They don't come here unless one of you got out."
Vyomika's blood—or whatever coursed through her—ran cold. Her body began reacting. Unconsciously. Her vision sharpened. An overlay activated in the corner of her right eye:
> SIGNATURE SUPPRESSION FAILED
EXPOSURE RISK: 92%
RECOMMENDATION: RELOCATE IMMEDIATELY
She wasn't just being hunted.
She was broadcasting.
> "They can find me," she said. "I'm pinging them. My body—it's giving off a signal."
The girl's face went hard. She stood up quickly.
> "Then you need to shut it down. Or they'll burn the whole sector looking for you."
Vyomika tried to access the interface again. Nothing. Scrambled code. Fragments of commands. Corrupted strings.
She stumbled to her feet.
> "There's a black zone," the girl said. "Old EMI field from the collapse. Drones lose signal there. But it's three clicks through Sector Theta."
Vyomika looked outside.
The drone was circling back.
> "Then we run," Vyomika said.
> "No," the girl corrected. "We vanish."
And just like that, they slipped into the shadowed arteries of the slum—one an echo of humanity, the other its stubborn spark—while the sky above pulsed with the cold, mechanical heartbeat of the hunt.
The alleys narrowed as they ran—if it could be called running. Vyomika moved in jerks and hesitations, her body struggling to sync with terrain not optimized for artificial balance.
The girl, agile and sure-footed, darted between shadows, glancing back only to confirm Vyomika hadn't collapsed.
> "Sector Theta's through the waste trench. Don't step in the water—it's not water anymore."
They turned a corner and ducked beneath a collapsed overpass. Concrete slabs jutted from the ground like broken teeth. Rusted drone parts littered the trench—wing segments, carbon husks, surveillance optics half-buried in grime. Failed hunts from past cycles.
> "This used to be a maintenance route," the girl said. "Before Nexatech sealed it off. Something down here kills signal. They stopped asking why."
Vyomika's internal HUD flickered. Her vision glitched.
> SIGNAL LOSS: 72%
NEURAL CORE DESTABILIZING…
UNKNOWN FREQUENCY DETECTED
A low hum entered her ears. Not heard—felt. It vibrated in her teeth, her spine, her mind.
> "Something's here," she said.
The girl didn't respond. Her eyes were fixed on a blackened wall ahead—covered in glyphs burned into the surface by plasma or something older.
> "We're close."
Vyomika staggered. The glyphs pulsed. Data streamed across her retina in a language she didn't know, but that her system tried to parse.
> FRACTAL CODE SEQUENCE DETECTED
ROOT SOURCE: PRE-NEXATECH
MATCH: 47% — REAWAKENING PROTOCOLS
Then she saw it.
A shape—half-buried under layers of plastic and wire. Human-like. But not breathing. Its eyes were dark glass domes. Its face was hers—but an earlier model. Primitive. Abandoned.
> "What is that?" Vyomika whispered.
The girl answered without turning.
> "Your predecessor. Maybe your sister. Maybe your warning."
The old body twitched. A spark of light returned to its eyes.
Vyomika stumbled back. Her HUD went red.
> WARNING: CORE LINK ATTEMPT DETECTED
DO NOT ENGAGE. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT.
She turned away—too late.
The thing spoke, using her voice, layered in distortion:
> "We remember you."