No hesitation disguised as logic this time. Only motion. Only consequence. I could take her to my apartment—the thought arrived without permission, unfiltered and unwanted. It didn't feel like a decision I was making; it felt like something being remembered against my will.
"…Guess I still have something like…" I paused. The word stuck in my throat like it didn't recognize me anymore. "…feelings." A short, sharp exhale escaped me. It was almost a laugh, almost nothing. "…What a joke." Still, my grip tightened slightly around her. Not out of a desire to protect—not yet—but out of a simple certainty that she was real enough to hold. My voice dropped to a jagged whisper. "…well then."
Five minutes in, her weight began to feel wrong. It wasn't heavy, but it wasn't light in any comforting sense, either. It was inconsistent, as if the body I was carrying couldn't quite decide whether it fully existed. Every step I took made that uncertainty worse. My shoulders adjusted instinctively to the shift, but she didn't respond. She didn't resist, and she didn't insist on being alive in the way living things usually did.
The rain had turned harsher. It wasn't louder, just heavier, like the sky had finally given up on restraint and decided to punish the ground. Each drop hit with pressure, drilling through my fabric and skin, right down to my thoughts. It was cold, relentless, and endless. The city blurred beneath us into wet geometry—neon smeared across the pavement like a corrupted memory trying to reload itself.
I needed to get back. Fast, but not reckless. If I fell, she would fall too. (…Idiot.) The word came automatically. It wasn't an insult, but a correction to myself—to the part of me that had already stopped pretending this made any sense. Why did I pick her up? Why did I turn back? Why was I carrying her through the Sump like I actually had a reason to?
The questions formed badly, breaking apart before they could ever become complete thoughts. I didn't have answers, and I wasn't even sure I was allowed to have them. My grip shifted again. I was careful, controlled. She remained unconscious, silent, and wrongly light. I turned my head slightly, trying to see her face, but it was pointless. The rain blurred everything into unstable shapes, her features dissolving between reality and reflection.
"…Mom… Dad…" The words slipped out before I could stop them. They were low and fractured, not aimed at anyone—just pressure finding a crack in the silence. "…what should I do…?" The rain didn't answer. It never did. It only kept falling, as if it had all the time in the world to ignore me properly.
Silence stretched, occupied by something I refused to name. I looked forward, focused solely on the path. Step. Then step. Don't think, just move. That was the rule, the only one that still worked. Ten minutes passed, maybe more. Time was starting to lose its shape. At this pace, it would be seven more minutes, maybe eight. Then the apartment. Then the silence that belonged only to me.
(…Home.) The word felt unfamiliar, like it belonged to someone else's life. My thoughts drifted back to her anyway. That body, that condition, those injuries. They weren't random or accidental; they were intentional. (…Does it matter?) "…No." The answer came too fast, too practiced. If it mattered, then the world still demanded a reaction from me, and I didn't have anything left for that.
But my mind never listened when I needed it to. If I left her like that, the wounds wouldn't stabilize. They would worsen, spread, and break down. (…Tch.) My jaw tightened. I had a kit at the apartment—an AFH standard issue. Anti-Form Hybrid medical set. I didn't have it because I cared; I had it because ignoring the reality of AIs in this city meant becoming statistically, inconveniently dead.
AIs weren't "others" anymore. They were infrastructure, people, problems, and everything in between. Entire industries were built around maintaining things the world once insisted shouldn't exist. Eighty years—that's what it took for machines to stop being machines in the way people understood them. Now they walked through cities like they belonged there. They studied, worked, laughed, and pretended.
My grip tightened suddenly as her body shifted. Instinct reacted before thought could intervene; I steadied her immediately, securing her against me. Her breathing stayed uneven, unaware. Good. Stay like that, I thought. Don't wake up yet. Not here. Not now. Minutes passed in broken fragments until the building finally appeared. It was plain and unremarkable—a place for people with nowhere better to disappear.
500 credits a month. Too much for silence, too little for life. I stopped at the entrance, pausing not because I needed to, but because something in me still checked for permission. I pressed my finger to the scanner. There was a soft mechanical acknowledgment—a door deciding I was allowed to continue existing inside it. Click. Inside, the world changed tone. No rain, no wind, no neon bleed. Just enclosed, artificial stillness.
My apartment was twenty by twenty feet. Small enough to memorize, large enough to feel empty. Bathroom on the right, kitchen on the left. A table with three unused chairs.
A desk with an old laptop that had learned the art of silence. And at the far end, the bed—double, curtained, with a divider system designed for couples or for people who couldn't stand themselves. I didn't care which.
I walked forward slowly, lowering her onto the bed with more care than I wanted to admit. For a moment, I didn't move. I just looked at her.
Her chest rose faintly, unstable, like her breathing was borrowed instead of owned. (…Still alive.) It didn't feel like relief; it felt like a delay. I turned away, opened the desk drawer, and pulled out the AFH kit. I placed it beside her and snapped it open.
Then I stopped. My eyes scanned the contents—tools, liquids, bandage systems, injection modules, diagnostic interfaces.
None of it was familiar. None of it was intuitive. None of it felt human. "…Don't tell me…" A realization arrived far too late to help. "…I don't know how to use this." Silence followed, thick and unhelpful. I stared at the kit, then at her, then back again.
Finally, it broke. "—I DON'T KNOW HOW TO USE AN AFH FIRST AID KIT FOR AIS!!" The words hit the walls and immediately felt too large for the room. Nothing responded, not even the machine in the box. I exhaled sharply, running a hand through my damp hair.
Frustration was rising too fast. (…You've got to be kidding me.) Underneath the anger was something worse: the realization that I had brought her here without ever knowing what came after.