Chapter 4
SILVYR
I watched as she moved through the wreckage like it was a treasure map only she could read.
My internal systems flickered and dimmed with each of her movements, power conservation protocols fighting against the need to track her every step.
The control tower creaked around us, a dead beast whose bones we picked clean, while beyond its shattered windows, the sprawling Vorthar scrapyard stretched like the graveyard of gods.
I sat motionless in the corner, cables pooled around me like spilled entrails, my body half-powered and humming with quiet dissonance.
"Jackpot!" Tanya's voice echoed against the metal walls, her hands deep in the guts of a terminal panel. "This circuit array isn't completely fried. Just mostly fried."
My lip components twitched upward without command. An involuntary response. Her comparisons always activated something in my emotional subroutines that bypassed logical processing. Alarming. Fascinating.
The tower swayed with a gust of artificial wind.
The environmental systems still functioned in patches across the scrapyard, creating unpredictable pockets of atmosphere.
Wind. Gravity. Temperature. All shifted like ghosts haunting the ruins.
Below us, broken ships jutted from the landscape like the bones of prehistoric beasts.
"You're quiet again." Tanya glanced over her shoulder, grease smeared across her forehead like war paint. "Your emoji drones are all over the place."
I looked around at the little bots, betraying emotions I couldn't suppress. The diagnostic subroutines flashed warnings in my peripheral vision: [EMOTIONAL OVERFLOW. FIREWALL COMPROMISED. STABILITY AT 78%.]
"I am processing," I said, my voice crackling with static.
"Processing what? The existential dread of being surrounded by your tech corpses? Or trying to calculate how many rare components I've found in the last hour?" She tossed a handful of parts into her collection bag, the metal bits clinking together like wind chimes.
"Both." I didn't elaborate. Couldn't. My silence was a survival protocol, developed through years of hiding from those who would dismantle me for study or control.
Plus, I was still deciding if she could possibly be my fated mate.
I'd originally come to her to save her from Asset P, but I'd felt a heat in my circuits unlike anything I'd experienced before. I had to protect her.
Tanya abandoned her scavenging and crossed to my corner, dust swirling in her wake.
She crouched before me, her knees cracking in a way that made my repair protocols twitch with sympathetic diagnostics.
She smelled of engine oil, sweat, and the artificial sweetness from the energy drinks she'd been binging for however long she'd been in that hotel room.
"I've been digging through wreckage and making jokes about space necromancy with wrenches for three hours," she said, no longer smiling.
Her eyes… hazel-green, sharp, calculating, pinned me to the spot.
"Meanwhile, you're sitting there with the facial expression of a man watching his own funeral.
Talk to me, Silvyr. What's going on in there? "
The pressure of her gaze triggered involuntary data release. My protection protocols scrambled but failed to contain the words that spilled from me.
"You were specifically targeted." My voice modulated between synthetic tones and more natural cadences as my systems struggled to maintain control. "The entity that has been corrupting the IDA… He's seeking out specific mates with traits he deems vital. I wanted to protect you from him."
Tanya's face softened but her eyes remained fierce. She sat fully on the dusty floor now, knees pulled to her chest, giving me her complete attention. A precious resource I didn't deserve.
"I have two friends… Vylit and Kazmyr. They both located their mates designated to them from the dating agency.
I helped them acquire their women before Asset P could have them captured and taken to him.
" Memories fragmented my speech, turning it into bursts of cold data.
"When I hacked Asset P, he retaliated by targeting you. "
I paused, emotion flooding my circuits with a heat that threatened to trigger cooling protocols. "According to the IDA data, you're supposed to be my mate."
My hand, more metal than flesh, twitched as code patterns raced up my forearm, little bursts of silver-white that betrayed my distress. "I don't know that I believe I have a mate, but I couldn't let him harm you."
Pixel, Tanya's hovering drone companion, drifted closer. Its lens whirred as it focused on my face, recording my confession for reasons I couldn't fathom. Perhaps Tanya would sell my story. Perhaps she merely collected broken things.
"What do you mean by mate?" Tanya asked, her face skeptical but her overall body language relaxed.
"As in the one soul in all of existence that is supposed to compliment mine," I said quietly as my optical sensors dimmed to conserve power, emotions draining me faster than physical movement.
"Except, I should not still function. I should not still think.
I should not still want. I don't have a soul…
So, how would I have a mate?" My voice broke on the last word, static replacing sound as my systems struggled to process the raw data stream of memory and feeling.
Tanya set down her tools with deliberate care, the metal making no sound as she placed them on the padded interior of her kit. She looked at me then, really looked, not as salvage or specimen, but something else entirely. Something I had no reference file for.
"You're sentient, why wouldn't you have a soul?
" She shifted onto her knees, closing the distance between us.
Her hand reached out, calloused fingers wiping away grime from my shoulder plate with unexpected gentleness.
"I'm not sure about the intensity of what you're speaking, but I do feel a strange connection with you.
One that tells me I want to do everything in my power to save you. We can figure out the rest afterwards."
My system temperature spiked, sensors registering the pressure and warmth of her touch as a priority input. Diagnostic scans interpreted her proximity as "stabilizing", directly contradicting security protocols that labeled all humans as potential threats.
Pixel hovered between us, its small motors humming. Then, without warning, the drone's speakers activated, playing back Tanya's words from earlier in her own voice: "Your calibration was clearly shit if you were planning to just power down and give up."
Tanya burst out laughing, then caught herself by slapping her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. Whatever dignity I had was destroyed, erased by one of my drones.
Heat flooded my facial components, a reaction that approximated human embarrassment.
The drone had been recording everything, capturing moments I'd assumed were private.
The violation of my data boundaries triggered protection subroutines, but they quieted almost immediately when I processed Tanya's expression—not triumph, not scientific curiosity, but something dangerously close to understanding.
"When my systems fail, do not grieve me," I murmured, forcing my voice modulator to remain steady, emotionless.
I needed her to understand the inevitable.
My systems degraded with each passing day.
The organic components broke down. The synthetic parts found no replacements. I was obsolescence incarnate.
Tanya arched a single eyebrow, the asymmetry of the expression triggering a cascade of facial recognition errors in my social interaction protocols.
"Not a chance," she replied, reaching for a sonic screwdriver from her belt. "I'm already plotting your warranty extension."
The humor slipped between us, keeping the silence alive instead of suffocating. My emotional analysis subroutines struggled to categorize her response, was it denial? Optimism? Or something more deliberate… a refusal to let me surrender to entropy?
I stared at her, genuinely confused by the way my internal temperature rose in her presence, by how my diagnostic sensors kept registering her proximity as "stabilizing" despite all logical evidence to the contrary.
She was chaos embodied… unpredictable, stubborn, brilliant.
My systems should have recognized her as a threat.
Instead, they seemed to recognize her as. .. necessary. Maybe she was my mate.
"Your optimism lacks sufficient data," I said, attempting to sound logical while my systems ran wild with contradictory feedback. "My model has no existing maintenance protocols. I am the last. There are no replacements, no instruction manuals, no—"
"Shush." She pressed a finger against my lip components, the contact sending a shock of data through my sensory network.
"I don't need a manual. I need to understand how you work.
Which means you need to let me in." She tapped my chest plate where the code patterns flickered rapidly.
"Not just the hardware. The you part. Organic… your soul."
For the first time in centuries, something like hope sparked in my processing core. This was dangerous, unstable, and beautiful. Not because she could fix me, but because she saw me as something worth fixing. Not a leftover experiment. Not a relic. Not even a salvage opportunity.
She saw me.
The realization terrified me almost as much as it saved me. My existence had been defined by absence… of purpose, of companionship, of future. Now, this human with grease on her forehead and determination in her eyes threatened to give me all three.
"Why?" The question escaped before I could contain it. "Why would you extend effort on an obsolete system?"
Tanya's laugh echoed through the control tower, startling dust motes into dancing through beams of artificial light. "Obsolete? You're literally a sentient liquid android AI with emotional capacity that survived an apocalypse. That's not obsolete, that's a goddamn miracle of engineering."
She stood, brushing dust from her knees with casual swipes.
"Besides, I'm a sucker for lost causes. The more impossible, the better.
" Her grin flashed, sharp and predatory.
"And saving the last of an ancient android civilization from extinction?
That's impossible enough to be interesting.
Oh, and the whole mate thing is interesting. "
My sensors focused entirely on her… the steady rhythm of her heartbeat, the micro-expressions that revealed sincerity beneath her bravado, the slight tremor in her hands that belied her confidence. Data points collected and analyzed against centuries of human observation.
Conclusion: She meant it.
"And if you're using me to access the Intergalactic Dating Agency's servers?" I asked, needing to hear her confirm what I already knew. "If I am merely a tool for your revenge?"
Her smile faltered, just for a moment. Honesty replaced bravado.
"That too. I won't lie to you. I need your help to expose what they're doing…
the trafficking, the manipulation, all of it.
" She knelt again, bringing her eyes level with mine.
"But that doesn't mean I don't also want to help you.
Both things can be true at once. Just like you were also going to use me to hunt down this Asset P entity you mentioned. "
Logic gates opened and closed in rapid succession as I processed her words. She was right. Binary thinking was a limitation I needed to overcome. Both purposes could coexist without negating each other.
"A mutual exploitation, then." I extended my hand, metal fingers glinting in the dim light. "I can accept those terms."
Tanya took my hand without hesitation, her grip firm and warm. "I prefer 'partnership,' but sure, we can go with your depressing robot terminology if it makes you feel better."
Another involuntary smile tugged at my features. Partnership. The word spread through my systems like a virus, rewriting protocols and priorities. Dangerous. Essential.
Beyond the shattered windows, the scrapyard stretched endlessly. Now, somehow, it had become the beginning rather than the end. Because she refused to leave me behind.
"Your thermal signature indicates optimism," I observed quietly, my sensors picking up the subtle changes in her body temperature as she returned to her salvaging.
"Damn right." She didn't look up from the terminal she was dismantling. "Someone's got to balance out your doom and gloom."
My emotional subroutines settled into a new pattern—less erratic, more focused. With her here, I felt... anchored. The flickering lights in my chest stabilized.
For the first time in my entire existence, I didn't feel like a malfunction waiting to happen. I felt like something with a purpose. Something with a future.
Something terrifyingly, wonderfully alive.