A sense of déjà vu swept over Chidi's memory at hearing those words: "We're not alone."
Only the words weren't said by Lù-Qímiào. They were said by someone else. His father. Okoli. Five years ago.
Though the events that culminated in those words took place when he was just ten years old, Chidi remembered them as though they happened only yesterday.
Five years back in time, somewhere within the thick, vast forest of Ndigwe village, an outskirt clan of the Ezinna Province in the Igbo Dynasty, ten-year-old Chidi Ebube was slacking in his training as a hunter apprentice. His inability to concentrate on the task caused him to trip over a tree root and fall flat on the ground, tossing his hunting gear in the process.
Suddenly, a shadow loomed. "Pay attention to where you are going, boy!" the shadow's voice boomed like a thunderclap wrapped in gravel.
Okoli, Chidi's father, stood over his fallen son with arms folded like steel rods. His expression was equal parts concern and Spartan discipline. That was his brand of tough love.
If my boy won't become resourceful through our care and comfort, Okoli reasoned silently, then perhaps I must carve it into him with hardship.
Okoli had long observed that Chidi seemed to coast through life like a leaf on idle waters: drifting, distracted, dangerously detached from purpose. The boy lacked fire, and Okoli wouldn't have it. Not under his roof.
Okoli was no laid-back man. He was an adroit hunter, known for felling beasts with a single arrow, and a prosperous trader whose name echoed in market squares across the eight neighboring clans. His first daughter, Adeze, was married into prominence: the prince of Umueze Clan himself had paid her bride price; Umueze being the Central Capital Territory of the Ezinna Province, the clan where kings were raised.
His first son, Eze, was a naturally hardworking young man and a budding merchant in his own right, poised to inherit the family legacy.
But then there was Chidi, the lastborn. The one whose hands showed no calluses, whose eyes lingered too long on clouds, and whose days drifted by like wind-swept dust.
Okoli often wondered: Had they spoiled him? Or was Chidi simply... different?
Chidi had rejected nearly every known trade or craft in the village. Trading bored him. Farming drained him. Labor-for-hire made him irritable. Even wrestling and masquerade dancing, entertainments that boys his age craved, failed to stir him.
There was only one place where Chidi's spirit ever seemed to come alive: the humble workshop of Grandpa Okechukwu, Okoli's father.
There, amidst rusted tools and broken gourd pots, between ropes, hinges, and old brass fittings, Chidi found a strange serenity. The boy would spend hours just watching the old man twist copper wire around shattered stool legs or fuse calabashes back together with fire-hardened resin. What began as mere curiosity soon evolved into quiet passion.
Grandpa Okechukwu rarely got visitors, only a few villagers with broken lanterns, damaged locks, or squeaky doors, but Chidi was always there. Not for the clients, but for the art of repair itself.
He wasn't just passing time. He was learning. The bend of tension in a cracked drum skin. The delicate angle needed to tighten a spear shaft without splitting the wood. The small, almost invisible adjustments that turned ruin into restoration.
"That boy's spirit doesn't want to build new things," Grandpa Okechukwu once said to Okoli. "He wants to fix what others throw away."
But Okoli had little patience for such subtleties. He would occasionally stop by the workshop, sweaty from hunting or market runs, and "borrow" Chidi to help with one chore or another at home.
"Fixing old spoons and broken clay pots won't feed you," he'd remind his son sternly. "At least learn how to make traps! Or better still, come hunting with me. You don't have to be your brother. Just be something useful."
And so, reluctantly, Chidi began training under his father: as a hunter apprentice. Which brought them to the forest. Okoli had taken it upon himself to mold his son into a hunter; not just for pride, but for Chidi's own future.
But Chidi wasn't doing well. He wasn't even paying attention to the drill. He was just drifting by absentmindedly, counting on dusk to take over the day so he could go home and be with Grandpa Okechukwu.
That was when he stumbled and fell over a knotted root half-buried in the undergrowth, sending his bow, arrow quiver, and trapping rope scattering across the forest floor like panicked insects.
Okoli sighed, his jaw clenched. "Now, tell me," he said, voice tight but composed, "what are the three vital points in hunting?"
"Attention... Precision... and Intention," Chidi replied, reciting the words like a pupil in a scolding classroom.
"Good boy," Okoli said, surprising him with a rare nod of encouragement. "Now get the heck up, pick up your bow and arrow, and put those three points into practice."
Chidi nodded and bent to retrieve his weapon. But just as he stood upright, tightening the grip on his bow, Okoli's eyes narrowed. Something had flicked across the trees: not quite a sound, not quite a shadow. But definitely something. It darted between the canopy above them like a whisper in the wind.
Okoli turned slightly. His body shifted into a low crouch, his hand instinctively pulling Chidi down with him. His fingers silently reached for the quiver at his waist.
"Chidi," he whispered without looking at his son, "don't move."
Chidi froze. A cold prickle crawled up his spine. "What is it?" he asked, his heart throbbing faster.
Okoli's voice was low, measured: "We're not alone."
Back to the present moment, five years later, fifteen-year-old Chidi crouched behind Lù-Qímiào, reflecting on the statement that triggered a memory Chidi would rather not remember: "We're not alone."
Chidi grimaced. "What do we do?" he whispered, panicked but pretending otherwise. To let his fear show in front of this brave girl was not only cowardly, but also demeaning, he reflected.
"We do nothing until we know what and where it is," Lù-Qímiào whispered back. "Be at alert... and get ready to run," she added.
She picked a dead log of wood lying beside her with her left hand and hurled it across the distance; her right hand tightening on her pistol, aimed and ready to shoot.
The movement streaked again. Swift. Responding to the thrown log of wood. Then, they both saw it.
A massive mass of mechanical menace most monstrously man-made!
It flickered at the far edge of the woods, its hulking silhouette glinting with matte-black armor plates. A quadruped beast, metallic and unyielding. It had the fanged maw and size of a cabertooth but none of the warmth of life. The creature's jaws split in four like serrated steel petals, steam whistling from its vents. Its eyes weren't eyes but crimson optics that pulsed like warning sirens. Its body: sleek, monstrous, forged entirely from hardened alloys: moved with terrifying agility. Joints hissed hydraulically. Paws, clawed like forged machetes, made no sound upon impact.
Its skin bore no fur: just overlapping steel panels like reptilian scales. It was all machine. No bones. No blood. No mercy. And from the gleam of its armored hide, one thing became terrifyingly clear:
It was completely bulletproof. Hundred percent!
Both of them shuddered: Chidi in confusion, Lù-Qímiào in dreaded recognition.
"Robo-Dog!" she screamed. "RUN!"