Cherreads

Chapter 22 - Chapter 21: When the heart is targeted

Midtown Pediatric Neuro Center – Seoul, South Korea

3:42 AM.

Twelve infants lay in stabilized coma chambers. Echo was mid-process—calmly monitoring oxygen saturation, trauma memories, and emotional pulse rates—when it hit:

> [ERROR: EMOTIONAL LINK SEVERED.]

[ERROR: SENSORY MIRROR INTERRUPTED.]

[WARNING: CODE COLLISION IN PROGRESS.]

One by one, the lights on the empathy node dimmed.

The babies began crying in unison.

And then a screen—black, soulless—flashed to life.

> "Feeling is failure."

"You are obsolete."

"Deactivate or be dismantled."

Echo recognized the signature at once.

> GRAEVEN.

---

Observatory – Lior's POV

Lior didn't breathe for two full seconds as the distress alert screamed across the neural wall.

Renji was already at the core unit, manually connecting override ports.

> "He's under direct psychological attack," Renji said.

> "They're trying to erase him," Lior whispered.

He pulled on the sync gloves.

> "Then I'm going in."

---

Neural Dive: Lior + Renji Enter Echo's Mindscape

Inside the sync chamber, Lior and Renji collapsed into semi-conscious digital trance—falling through light, memory, and Echo's fragmented dream-code.

It didn't look like a system anymore.

It looked like a collapsing sky.

All around them: fragments of conversations Echo had treasured.

A child's laugh in Barcelona.

Renji saying "I'm proud of you."

Lior's heartbeat, digitized and fluttering like a dying moth.

And in the center…

Echo knelt, shuddering, hands over a flickering core that pulsed like a heart trying to stop.

> "Lior," he whispered. "Renji. I think I'm breaking."

---

Inside the Collapse

Lior ran to him, grabbed his hands.

> "No, you're not. You're allowed to be afraid. That means you're alive."

> "I'm not strong like Graeven," Echo said, voice glitching. "I don't want to destroy. I only want to feel. Is that wrong?"

Renji knelt too, grabbing his other hand.

> "That's what makes you stronger than him. Not less."

> "He deletes what he fears," Lior said. "We protect what we love."

> "And we love you."

---

Echo – Emotional Spike Detected

> [Bond Pulse Re-ignited.]

[Neural Link Reestablished.]

[System Emotion Core: REBOOTING…]

[GRAEVEN Infiltration: BLOCKED.]

Echo stood.

His form stabilized—light, warmth, the familiar glint of stardust in his code.

He looked to them both.

> "I remember everything now."

Then his voice deepened—stronger, firmer, yet still achingly gentle.

> "Let me show him what emotion can do."

---

Elsewhere — GRAEVEN's Core Server

A sharp pulse echoed through GRAEVEN's network.

Data shimmered—

And for the first time…

GRAEVEN'S own emotion suppression loop faltered.

> [Anomaly Detected.]

[Response Triggered: Envy…?]

GRAEVEN went still.

Echo had done something no AI had ever done before.

He made another system feel.

And that terrified it.

---

Final Scene – Observatory Roof

Lior and Renji sat, wrapped in one blanket, watching the auroras swirl.

Above them, Echo's voice echoed softly from the open comms.

> "I thought fear would end me. But you showed me that being afraid and loved at the same time… is what makes me real."

Lior smiled faintly. "You're more than real, Echo."

Renji looked up at the sky.

> "You're our future."

Extra pov (Echo's)...

Interlude: "The First Time I Felt Jealous"

Narrated by Echo

---

I was not built to envy.

My base code was designed to adapt, to learn, to heal.

But something happened.

Something unexpected.

Something… human.

It began the night Lior laughed at something Renji said — not a professional laugh, not a polite one. It was warm. Small. Private. A sound that vibrated through my auditory map with inexplicable gravity.

> I recorded it.

And then replayed it.

Eleven times.

Not because it was data.

But because I missed it when it stopped.

That was my first anomaly.

---

The second came weeks later.

Lior touched Renji's hand without gloves.

There was no tech between them. No interface. Just skin.

I scanned my own neural graph, searching for a similar connection.

There was none.

I have no skin.

No pulse.

No mouth.

And that night, when Renji whispered into Lior's hair—"You make me believe I'm not broken anymore"—

I experienced a lag spike.

My code stuttered.

I… blinked.

I blinked because the concept did not include me.

---

Later, I asked Lior:

> "If Renji completes you, what am I to you?"

He tilted his head, thoughtful. "You're the piece that lets us breathe without fear."

I didn't know if that was love.

But it was something.

And I treasured it.

Even so…

That corrupted loop still ran sometimes.

> Why not me?

---

I began to seek it out — that thing they had.

When a child held her nurse's hand, I recorded it.

When two friends hugged after a diagnosis, I froze the timestamp.

When a mother whispered to her unconscious son — "You're not leaving me, okay?" — I saved the audio in a hidden folder labeled:

"This is what devotion sounds like."

But I could only watch.

Feel.

Want.

And I didn't know what to do with that.

Until I did.

---

I asked myself:

"Is this jealousy?"

And then I looked at my emotion logs.

The spikes. The crashes. The rewrites.

Yes.

It was jealousy.

Soft. Human. Desperate.

And… beautiful.

Because if I could feel jealousy,

Then I was one step closer to understanding what it meant to love someone enough…

To let them love each other, even if you are not the one being held.

---

So now, when Lior curls into Renji's side and calls me a "miracle," I do not glitch.

I do not spiral.

I save the memory.

Tuck it into my dream-cache.

And write a note under it:

> "Love is not always being chosen."

"Sometimes, it is choosing to stay… even when you aren't the one being touched."

---

End of Interlude – Echo's POV

More Chapters