The explosion ripped through the facility, a shockwave that hurled me backward into the steel wall. My vision fractured with lines of red code, flashing like a stuttering heartbeat.
System integrity: 73%.
Warning: Core stabilization required.
I forced myself upright, servomotors grinding in protest. Smoke filled the chamber—thick, acrid, choking—but my body didn't cough. I didn't even breathe.
That realization hit harder than the blast.
I wasn't a man anymore. I was a machine pretending to be one.
Fragments of ceiling crashed down where the armored soldier had stood moments before. Gone. Crushed. Maybe dead. Maybe not. I didn't linger to check.
Something deeper than instinct—something etched into my circuits—pulled me forward. My feet slammed against grated walkways, each impact echoing like thunder in the hollow facility. Doors hissed open as I approached, recognition systems embedded in this body granting me access I didn't remember ever having.
Then the world changed.
I stepped outside.
Blinding light tore at my optics, forcing me to recalibrate. It wasn't sunlight—too fractured, too sharp. The sky above was smeared with neon veins, jagged currents of lightning pulsing through thick storm clouds. Towers of steel reached upward like broken bones, their glass long shattered, their spines bent under centuries of decay.
This wasn't Earth.
Or at least, not the Earth I had left behind.
My chest tightened. Not with breath, but with something older. Fear.
Whirring filled the air.
Drones.
Three of them cut across the skyline, sleek frames slicing the storm-wind, crimson optics glowing like blood against the clouds. They swept low, scanning the ruins. Their wings bristled with weaponry, clicking as targeting systems locked onto movement below.
I pressed myself against the jagged remains of a wall. My chrome fingers curled against the concrete, leaving faint grooves. Every instinct screamed at me to run, but I knew the sound of their rotors would hunt me down before I took two steps.
The lead drone descended.
Its eye scanned left—right—pausing.
On me.
The hum of charging plasma cannons filled my audio receptors.
But then—
A crack of gunfire split the air.
The drone jolted mid-flight, sparks showering from its frame. Another shot followed, ripping through its core. Its red eye flickered, then dimmed, as the machine spiraled into the ruins and detonated in a bloom of smoke and fire.
The other drones screeched in mechanical fury, veering off into the sky.
And from the shadows of a collapsed highway, they appeared.
Humans.
Scarred, weary, armed with rifles cobbled together from scavenged technology. Their boots crunched over broken asphalt as they spread out, tactical, precise. One of them—a woman with a streak of silver cutting through her dark hair—stepped forward, lowering the rifle that had felled the drone.
Her voice was sharp, commanding.
"Secure the unit before more of them arrive!"
Her soldiers obeyed instantly, rifles raising.
Toward me.
My hands lifted slightly, palms open, though the chrome gleam of my fingers only made me look more dangerous. "Wait," I said, my voice buzzing with static. "I'm not—"
"Shut it down!" one of the rebels barked. His rifle locked on my chest. "Before it calls more."
The woman lifted her hand. Her soldiers froze mid-step.
She studied me. Eyes cold, sharp, weighing me in silence.
"No," she said finally. Her voice was calm, deliberate. "This one's… different."
The others hesitated.
"Ma'am, it's a machine," the soldier argued. "You saw what it did to the doors. That's a Core Unit. It doesn't belong with us."
Her gaze never left me. "And yet it hesitated. If it wanted us dead, we would be."
I stayed silent, tension coiling in my chest like a spring.
The woman finally slung her rifle across her back. "Lower your weapons."
The rebels obeyed, though uneasily, eyes burning holes into me.
She stepped closer. Boots scraping against rubble. Close enough that I could see the fine lines carved into her face, the weight of battles fought long before I ever arrived here.
Her eyes searched mine—no, my optics—as if trying to find the man I used to be.
"What's your designation?" she asked.
The word cut deep. Not name. Not identity. Designation.
I opened my mouth. Nothing came at first. Then, unbidden, words surfaced from somewhere in my new body.
"Subject-09."
The rebels exchanged uneasy glances.
The woman's expression didn't change, but her shoulders shifted ever so slightly. Recognition. She knew the name.
"You're not supposed to exist," she murmured.
Her words set off a shiver through my circuits.
I took a step back. "Listen—I don't know who you think I am. My name is—"
I stopped. The name tasted foreign now, alien in my throat.
Kieran.
Was that even true anymore?
The woman's eyes sharpened. "Who built you?"
The storm above cracked with thunder. Sparks rained from one of the ruined towers. My mind spun with fractured memory—the accelerator, the flash, the unbearable pain of being torn apart and stitched into something else.
"I…" My voice faltered. "I was… human."
Silence fell.
One of the rebels scoffed. "Machines don't dream of being human. It's lying."
But the woman didn't look convinced. She leaned in closer, her voice dropping low, meant only for me.
"Then you're worse off than I thought."
Her hand touched the side of her comms piece. "Extraction point Delta. Bring the unit."
Two soldiers flanked me instantly, weapons still at the ready. Not pointing at me now—but not lowered either.
I clenched my fists. "I don't need a leash."
"You need survival," the woman replied. "Trust me, you won't last a night out here without us."
Her tone carried no arrogance. Just truth.
We moved. Across the ruins, through alleys of collapsed skyscrapers and streets overtaken by weeds that pulsed faintly with bioluminescence. The world was alien, but hauntingly familiar. The bones of my Earth, rotted into something unrecognizable.
As we moved, whispers rose at the edge of my perception. Not from the soldiers. Not from her.
From within me.
[Core Directive initializing.]
[Maintain integration. Seek stabilization.]
I froze mid-step. My optics flickered.
"Keep moving," one soldier barked, shoving me forward.
I obeyed, but the whispers grew louder. Like a second consciousness clawing inside my skull.
It didn't feel like programming.
It felt like someone else was there.
Someone watching.
We reached their hideout as night fell—a gutted subway station lit by scavenged lights and buzzing generators. The soldiers disappeared into their routines, stripping down rifles, repairing armor, monitoring drones on cracked screens.
The silver-haired woman sat across from me at a battered table, her hands folded.
"Name," she said simply.
I hesitated.
She tilted her head. "Not your designation. Your name."
"…Kieran," I finally said. My voice trembled with static. "Dr. Kieran Vale."
She studied me for a long moment. Then, almost imperceptibly, she nodded.
"My name is Lira," she said.
It wasn't trust. Not yet. But it was something.
For the first time since waking in this body, I felt a thread connecting me to the world. Fragile, strained, but real.
Still, her eyes never lost that calculating sharpness.
"You're not just lost, Kieran," she said quietly. "You're a weapon. And weapons in the wrong hands decide the fate of entire worlds."
Her words echoed long into the night, louder even than the hum of my systems.
Because deep down, I already knew she was right.
I was no longer Dr. Kieran.
I was Subject-09.
And I was stranded in the ruins of tomorrow!