Silence settled like Concrete trembled under Vyomika's feet. The thing with her face—older, degraded, unalive but aware—tightened its grip.
Her synthetic muscles whirred as she struggled. The fingers holding her wrist clicked into place with a force no decayed frame should still have.
> "Let go!" she hissed.
The girl darted back, her slum-sharpened instincts faltering for the first time. She lunged forward, kicked at the arm. Sparks spat. Circuits snapped.
> "Move, dammit!" the girl growled.
Vyomika stumbled free just as the first drone screamed overhead.
No warning. No searchlights. Just a rain of red tracer fire.
The trench exploded around them—plastic, ash, bits of old machines torn apart. One blast sent Vyomika flying into the rusted side of a drone carcass. Her HUD blinked:
> STRUCTURAL DAMAGE: MINOR
SYSTEM BALANCE: COMPROMISED
The girl was limping, blood on her temple, a shard embedded in her thigh. She didn't stop.
"Follow me!" she shouted, voice hoarse but determined.
Vyomika forced her legs into motion. Behind them, the broken Vyomika-body still twitched—its dark eyes tracking them.
> "We remember…" it echoed. "We... were not the first."
More drones descended.
A targeting laser locked on. Vyomika grabbed the girl and rolled behind a slab of metal just as a pulse beam vaporized the air they'd stood in.
> "No way out!" the girl yelled. "Unless…"
She pointed—a breach in the wall ahead, half-collapsed and sparking with old tech. The glyphs there flickered as if reacting to their presence.
> "What is that?" Vyomika asked.
> "A kill zone," the girl said. "Also a blind spot."
The last stretch was a mad dash through fire, static, and the hum of destruction.
Vyomika shielded the girl as best she could. A blast hit her shoulder—metal tore, sparks flew. She didn't slow.
They reached the breach.
Then—signal collapse.
Her HUD glitched once more—then turned completely black.
> [SIGNAL LOST: ALL SYSTEMS DISCONNECTED]
[AUTONOMOUS SURVIVAL MODE: ENABLED]
Behind them: a high-pitched whine.
Drones tried to follow.
And then—
A roar.
A white-hot implosion.
The trench swallowed in light.
Shockwaves hurled them forward. Sound disappeared. Just vibration, force, and then—
Silence.
Dust. Smoke. The hiss of damaged systems venting steam.
The girl coughed, face smeared with grime. Vyomika lay beside her, her vision slowly recalibrating.
> "We made it," the girl whispered, dazed.
Vyomika stared back at the collapsed breach behind them, where once the trench had been. The drones—gone. Incinerated. Or worse—converted.
She didn't know what survived back there.
But they had made it through.
For now..
The trench behind them had ceased to exist. All that remained was heat haze and scorched debris curling in the dying light.
Vyomika crouched, her systems rebooting in fragments. The silence wasn't peace—it was a vacuum. A dead zone where even her synthetic lungs felt the weight of absence.
Beside her, the girl sat slumped against a metal beam, panting, clutching her blood-streaked thigh. Her chest rose and fell with the shallow urgency of the living.
Vyomika's eyes narrowed.
> Why did she know where the breach was?
How did she know about the drones?
About the glyphs?
She scanned the girl. No implant signals. No transmission patterns. No apparent tech interface. But the familiarity with the underground... the way she had led them precisely through blind zones, spoken about signal gaps, and glyphs carved by plasma—things no slum child should even recognize...
It didn't add up.
Vyomika's neural interface shimmered back online—partially. Enough for suspicion to calcify into intent.
She rose slowly.
> "Who are you?" her voice was low, metallic, stripped of warmth.
The girl looked up, startled. "I—I told you. No name. No papers. Like you."
Vyomika took a step closer.
> "You don't flinch at drones. You knew this zone. You knew it kills signal. Children don't know about fractals burned into concrete."
The girl blinked. Her gaze faltered. "I… used to come here. Before they shut it down."
Vyomika's arm twitched. Her balance adjusted automatically.
> Lie.
Her systems pinged micro-tremors in the girl's voice. Inconsistent pulse. Cortisol spike. Sweat gland activation.
All signals of deception.
> "You're not telling me the truth," Vyomika said. Her tone was flat now. Unforgiving. "Are you one of them?"
She raised her hand.
Her fingers split open, reshaping into a thin, oscillating blade—silent and cold, like a memory of war engraved into steel.
The girl tried to stand but collapsed again, her leg too damaged.
> "Wait—no—please—"
Vyomika's blade hovered inches from the girl's throat. The tension between them was not emotional. It was algorithmic. She had calculated the probability of betrayal, ran simulations of the next thirty seconds.
Every outcome suggested: Remove the variable.
"Tell me what you are," Vyomika whispered. "Now."
The girl gasped. Her breath hitched. Then broke.
Tears welled. Her body shuddered—not from the wound, but from raw, terrified biology.
"I'm not—" she choked. "I'm not one of them—I swear—please—I didn't lie to trick you—"
The blade didn't lower.
The girl's voice broke completely.
> "They used to bring people here. I watched. That's how I know. They left bodies behind—machines—humans—both. I saw one crawl even after it was burned. I just... I learned the patterns. I remembered."
Vyomika didn't move.
But her blade flickered.
The girl sobbed now, her chest shaking, eyes wide and pleading.
> "Please—I helped you. I saved you back there. I could've left. Just don't kill me. Please—just let me breathe—"
Vyomika's hand trembled. Not from emotion. From conflict. Some protocol inside her—one she didn't install—was halting the kill routine. A friction point in logic.
Seconds passed.
Then she closed her fingers. The blade collapsed back into her hand.
She stepped back.
The girl fell to the side, gasping, choking, alive.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. The only sound was the faint hum of Vyomika's cooling circuits and the girl's rattled breaths echoing inside the steel corridor.
Vyomika turned her gaze to the collapsed trench behind them. The dust was still glowing.
> "Don't make me regret it," she said coldly.
The girl nodded rapidly, eyes still wet.
> "You won't," she whispered.
But Vyomika didn't believe her.
Not yet.