You’re Not Gone, You’re just Dead.

The desert did not move.

Not the sand. Not the wind. Not me.

Only Gideon falling.

He dropped between her and the machine.

I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

Sylvi’s scream tore the silence apart. She hit the ground beside him, dragging him onto her lap, her hands pressed desperately against the bloom of red spreading across his chest.

“Gideon! Stay with me—please, stay with me!”

Her voice splintered. She rocked over him like prayer could bend reality.

But reality did not bend.

The robot’s head rotated, its monotone cutting through her cries:

“Neutralization failed: incorrect target.”

A pause. As if disappointed.

Sylvi’s tear-streaked face lifted. Fury burned hotter than fear. She surged straight at the monster.

The machine tilted its head, studying her as if she were some strange insect.

“Curious. You of all people displaying futility?”

Its arm swung once.

She crumpled into the sand. Unmoving.

And then it turned back.

Back to Gideon.

“No,” I whispered, too soft for anything but myself. My body wouldn’t move.

The machine loomed over him, watching his chest rise once, twice—then falter.

He was still alive.

It crouched. Blades retracted into fingers, thin and sharp as scalpels.

“Correction initiated.”

Sylvi stirred weakly on the ground, still reaching for him even in unconsciousness.

Metal drove into Gideon’s chest again.

And again.

And again.

Each thrust punched through flesh and bone with a sound I’ll never forget. Moist. Disgusting.

I wanted to look away. I couldn’t.

The body that had shielded us,

the body that protected Sylvi, jerked beneath its knives until it stopped jerking at all. Blood soaked the sand, dark and spreading, carried by the wind like nothing.

The machine straightened, Gideon’s body collapsing like discarded cloth.

“Neutralization complete,” it said flatly. Then, colder still:

“Target confirmed as irrelevant.”

I wanted to tear that machine apart with my bare hands.

I wanted its metal scattered like bones across the dunes.

I wanted it gone. Gone from this world. Gone from my sight.

And then—

The words slid into me, honey over broken glass:

It has taken from you. Stolen from you. It is only fitting you cast it out. And I… I will help you once again.

My breath hitched. My fists trembled. “Whatever it takes.”

Her voice deepened, coaxing, amused.

Even if it means—

“WHATEVER IT TAKES!” I roared, the sound tearing out of me, ripping into the sky, raw and savage and desperate.

Silence.

Then warmth.

Very well.

And I felt her. Not flesh, not blood — but lips all the same.

A kiss, seared into me, claiming me.

And from that point of contact, the gold came.

Cracks split open across my skin, glowing like fire caught in glass. They spread over my face, my neck, my chest — down my arms, around my ribs, crawling like veins of light through every fracture of me.

The machines head jerked towards me almost instantly,

“large amount of energy detected.”

It came at me first. Its both arms split open into a blade, a clean strike meant to carve me in half.

I ducked, sand exploding as the edge skimmed past my head. My fist came up in return, slamming into its chestplate metal caved inward, but only slightly, the shock running up my arm hard enough to numb it.

It countered fast, faster than thought. An elbow to my jaw. A kick to my ribs. Each hit was exact, mechanical, without hesitation. I stumbled back, boots dragging twin trenches in the sand.

But the cracks across my skin flared brighter. Pain flooded in, but with it speed. I lunged.

We collided, my shoulder driving into its stomach, forcing it half a step back. It felt like slamming into a wall.

The core inside it was pulsing now, a blinding glow pushing through the gaps. Its head tilted toward me, the red visor flickering.

“…impossible,” it rasped.

“Circuitry detected. Threat level seven. Threat level eight—“

“Threat level unable to be measured.”

Then it stopped moving. The light in its chest throbbed once, so bright I had to squint. It looked down at me, then past Mr at Sylvi’s unconscious body in the sand.

“You mistake yourself for the center. A child dressed in gold, raging against inevitability. But look at you. This is not destiny, this is error. A flaw in the order of all.

Humans are meant to kneel. Machines are meant to endure, and gods are meant to observe. And those who dare to overstep are meant to be erased.”

Its visor narrowed, the light flickering like a single eye.

The machine raised its blade, its voice dropping into something deeper, something almost human:

“I am not failure. I am not designation. I am the end that endures when all else rots. I am the hand that unravels defiance. I am…”

“…Exidus.”