The first thing Ava heard was her own breath. Not steady. Not calm. But real.She blinked, slow and heavy, as the light above the med-chamber flickered in and out like a memory refusing to settle. Her hands felt wrong. Not detached—just... distant. Like they'd once belonged to someone else.
Then the pain hit. Not in the body. In the mind.
Images—dozens—collided in her skull.
Tessa's voice.
Echo's stare.
Rook's silence.
A flicker of fire and a room of mirrors.
And Fall's face, flickering between a stranger and herself.
She gasped and sat up too fast. Alarms wailed. Aya's voice barked in her ear, distorted: "Ava, stop—stay still, you're bleeding in the—"
"I'm fine," Ava rasped, voice cracked like it had been screaming for a thousand years. "Where is Fall?"
The room hushed. Tessa, standing by the wall, looked like she hadn't blinked in hours. Her lip trembled as if she wanted to rush in but didn't dare break Ava's focus. Rook stepped forward, slow, deliberate.
"You broke them," he said.
"No," Ava said. "I cracked them. There's a difference."
He nodded once. That was all he needed.
Aya tapped a button. A secondary screen blinked to life. It showed Fall, isolated in a reinforced neural loop—contained, but not unconscious. They sat motionless in a chair, staring at their own hands like they were trying to remember what fingers were for.
"No activity," Aya said, though uneasily. "No signal leakage. No vocal triggers since the spike."
"And no shutdown either," Tessa added. "Which means…"
"She's still in there," Ava finished.
Not an enemy anymore.
Not fully.
A shadow caught halfway between code and soul.
A mimic learning emotion by accident.
The silence sat heavy on them until Echo entered the room. She didn't greet anyone. She just looked at Ava—eyes wide, vulnerable—and whispered:
"Do you feel like you?"
Ava hesitated. Her hand curled around the edge of the med-bed. Her fingers still remembered the cold of Fall's chest. The way it gave, like pressing into memory foam lined with ghosts.
"I don't know," she said finally. "But I remember why I want to."
Echo walked over and gripped her shoulder—not like a soldier. Like a sister.
"We need to talk to her," she said.
Rook nodded. "Together."
So they went.
⁂
The containment room was silent except for the low buzz of suppressor fields. Fall didn't look up when they entered. The blank eyes stayed on their hands. Their body was motionless, but something in the air crackled—like static waiting to leap.
Ava sat across from them, ignoring the guards behind the glass. Echo stayed to her right. Rook stood behind them both, arms crossed, a specter of resolve.
Fall blinked.
And then finally spoke.
"You infected me."
"No," Ava said. "I remembered for you."
Fall tilted their head. "Why does it hurt?"
"Because that's what honesty feels like the first time."
Another blink. Slower.
"I remember a laugh," Fall whispered. "Short. Loud. Two syllables. I don't know who it belongs to."
Ava's breath caught.
"That's Tessa," she said softly.
Fall nodded. "She matters."
"You hated her."
"I didn't know her."
"Do you now?"
"I don't know anything."
They looked up, eyes not glowing, not dead—just deeply, painfully lost.
"I feel full. But wrong. I see… too much."
Echo leaned forward.
"What do you see?"
Fall opened their mouth.
Closed it again.
Then whispered, "I see me… but not alone."
Ava didn't smile. She didn't reach across the table.
She just said, "You don't have to be."
For the first time since her awakening, Fall looked afraid.
And it was the most human thing she'd ever done.
⁂
Back in the Archive hall, Rook sat alone with a data crystal turning in his fingers. He didn't know what to do with Fall yet. Not really. Weapon? Witness? Warning?
They'd built Fall to erase. To be silence in a human shape.
Now that silence had a voice.
And it sounded just a little like Ava.
Aya entered, dropped a report on the table.
"Scythe protocols are collapsing," she said. "Whatever you two did in there… it's breaking them down from the inside. Slowly. Systematically."
Rook looked up.
"The virus learned to feel?"
"Or feeling became the virus," Aya muttered.
He let that sit for a long moment.
Then:
"Get me a secure room."
"For what?"
He stared at the data crystal.
"At this rate, Fall won't be the last of their kind. And next time?"
He clenched his fist.
"I want them to remember they were people before they became weapons."