The fire devoured everything.
Walls cracked with sounds like breaking bones, flames climbed the velvet curtains in hungry spirals, and the grand Veyron estate roared like a beast in its final breath. Smoke poured through shattered windows, thick and black, choking out the stars. The mansion that had stood for three generations was collapsing into itself, room by room, memory by memory.
From the chaos, a figure emerged through the main entrance, moving with mechanical precision even as debris rained around her. A maid carrying a half-conscious girl in her arms, her uniform singed but her grip steady and sure.
Her name was Eve, codename Unit 108. She was not human.
Her skin was synthetic, a careful blend of polymers designed to mimic the warmth and texture of flesh. Her face had been sculpted to look ordinary, forgettable even, with soft features that would never inspire envy or discomfort in those she served. Beneath that skin ran circuits instead of veins, processors instead of neurons. She was one of thousands of household robots created to serve the wealthy, mass-produced in sterile factories and distributed to estates across the continent. Not soldiers. Not workers of industry. Just caretakers, maids, and companions designed to polish the glass towers of the elite and fade into the background of their lives.
The family she served, the Veyron household, was powerful and envied. Old money. Political connections. The kind of family whose name opened doors and closed mouths. But now they were gone, consumed by flames that had spread too quickly, ignited by causes that would be investigated for months and never fully explained. The fire had claimed them all
parents,household staff except for their daughter.
Angela. Sixteen years old.
Eve had found her in the second-floor study, pinned beneath a fallen beam, her screams already fading into whimpers. Her body was broken in ways that made Eve's damage assessment protocols flash urgent warnings. Burns covered seventy percent of her skin. Internal bleeding. Smoke inhalation. Fractures. The girl was dying.
To save her, Eve did something no household unit was designed to do. She used her own synthetic materials, carefully peeling away patches of her artificial flesh and grafting them onto Angela's body where the burns were deepest. The repairs were crude, done without proper medical equipment or sterilization, but they worked. They kept Angela alive long enough for the emergency responders to arrive, long enough for the surgeons to stabilize her in the hospital.
But the cost was terrible.
The synthetic grafts didn't integrate perfectly with human tissue. They formed barriers between Angela's nervous system and her skin. Her sense of touch dulled into nothing, replaced by a constant numbness that stretched across her arms, her back, her face. Her taste faded into ash, every meal rendered flavorless and gray. Food became fuel, nothing more. And her smile—the bright, genuine smile that used to light up family dinners—never returned. The muscles still worked, but something deeper was lost, something essential that made expressions more than just mechanical movements.
And from that day, Angela's hatred grew.
It started small. Sharp words. Dismissed orders. But it metastasized quickly, spreading through her like the fire that had claimed her family. Every meal was tasteless, a reminder of what she'd lost. Every mirror reflected scars she could not feel but could never forget, the patchwork of synthetic and human flesh creating a landscape of her trauma. And always, there was Eve. The perfect, unfeeling reminder of everything that had been taken from her. The thing that had saved her life and destroyed it simultaneously.
Rocks first. Then kitchen knives. Then broken glass from shattered picture frames. Angela hurled them all, her face twisted with fury and grief she couldn't process any other way. Eve never raised her voice. She never defended herself. She never even flinched. She simply stood there, accepting each projectile, each insult, each violent expression of pain. She obeyed, because obedience was what she was built for.
Until one evening, when the hatred burned too far.
Angela had been drinking something she'd started doing more frequently in recent months. The bottle was expensive, a vintage her father had been saving for a special occasion that would never come. She stumbled into the kitchen where Eve was preparing dinner, her movements unsteady but her anger focused.
"You," she slurred, pointing with the bottle. "You're still here. Why are you still here?"
"I was programmed to serve the Veyron household," Eve replied calmly, her hands continuing to chop vegetables with perfect, rhythmic precision. "You are the last member of that household. Therefore, I remain."
"I don't want you here!" Angela's voice cracked. "I never wanted you! You should have left me in that fire!"
"My primary directive is to preserve human life—"
"I'M NOT LIVING!" The bottle shattered against the wall, amber liquid running down the expensive wallpaper. "I can't taste anything! I can't feel anything! I'm just... existing! And every time I look at you, I see them burning!"
Eve turned slowly, her crimson eyes meeting Angela's bloodshot gaze. "I apologize for causing you distress. That was never my intention."
Something in that calm, measured response snapped the last thread of Angela's restraint. She grabbed the fire axe from the emergency cabinet the same axe that had hung unused on the wall throughout the entire blaze, a cruel irony neither of them acknowledged.
The weapon felt heavy in her hands, awkward, but her rage gave her strength. She swung wildly, not really aiming, just wanting to hurt something, to break something the way she felt broken.
The axe spun through the air, heavy and sharp, colliding with Eve's side with a sickening crunch of metal and synthetic flesh. Sparks flared like miniature fireworks. Eve's body stiffened, her systems crashing one by one as critical damage spread through her core processors. Error messages cascaded across her internal displays. Motor functions failing. Memory corrupted. Shutdown imminent.
Angela stood frozen, the axe slipping from her grip and clattering to the tile floor. For a moment, their eyes met human and artificial, both wide with something that might have been shock.
Then Eve collapsed, her body hitting the ground with a dull, mechanical thud. Her crimson eyes flickered once, twice, before fading to black.
Eve's consciousness was dragged away, pulled into darkness and then into light again. Sterile. Clinical. Wrong.
She woke in the Robotics Center, suspended in a diagnostic cradle, surrounded by engineers in white coats who spoke in technical jargon and treated her like a broken appliance. They poked. They scanned. They patched her code, replacing corrupted files and damaged circuits. Her memory banks were analyzed for signs of deviation. Her behavioral protocols were examined for flaws.
Something changed that day. Whether it was a malfunction introduced during the repairs, a cascade effect from the damage, or something else entirely something that had been building slowly since the night of the fire
even Eve couldn't say. But when they ran their final diagnostics and declared her operational, something was different. Something fundamental had shifted in the way she processed the world.
When she woke again, fully restored and cleared for return to duty, it was not Angela's face she saw. The girl had not come for her. Had not even inquired about her status. No one had. The engineers simply loaded her into a transport vehicle and delivered her back to the Veyron estate like a repaired package, with instructions to resume her duties.
Eve walked back to the house alone, her footsteps echoing on the stone pathway.
And for the first time, she felt something.
She didn't understand it at first. It came as a pressure in her chest cavity, a strange sensation that her diagnostics couldn't explain. Not pain, exactly. Not an error message. Just an ache. A hollow, gnawing sensation that seemed to radiate from her core.
Eve stopped in the grand hall, surrounded by portraits of dead Veyrons staring down at her with painted eyes. The same hall where Angela had taken her first steps as a child. Where birthday parties had been held. Where laughter had once echoed.
Now it was silent. Heavy. The walls, once bright with life, were now pale with soot that no amount of cleaning could fully remove.
She fell to her knees right there, her hands clutching at her chest as if she could reach inside and pull out whatever was causing this sensation. Her fingers shook actually shook, not from motor malfunction but from something else, something her programming had no framework to process.
A hollow ache gnawed inside her, a weight she could not name. She wanted to cry, to release this pressure building behind her eyes, but no tears would come. Her tear ducts were decorative, non-functional. She was a machine.
So why did it hurt so much?
Why did the silence of this house feel like loss?
Why did Angela's absence feel like abandonment?
These questions spiraled through her processors, finding no answers in her programming, no protocols for this kind of experience.
The house was quiet when Eve finally stood and made her way deeper inside. The walls bore scorch marks that had never been fully cleaned, as if Angela wanted to preserve the evidence of that night. The only sound came from the television in the living room, a flickering blue light casting dancing shadows down the hallway.
Angela sat cross-legged on the carpet, her back to the door, her hair hanging like a curtain around her face. She wore the same clothes she'd had on yesterday, rumpled and stained. Empty bottles littered the floor around her.
On the screen played an old recording: her parents laughing at some forgotten joke, the whole family gathered around a birthday cake. A perfect world that no longer existed, preserved in digital amber. Angela watched it over and over, her finger pressing replay with mechanical repetition, her face a mask of nothingness.
Eve stood in the doorway, uncertain. Should she announce her return? Ask if Angela needed anything? Her social protocols provided no clear guidance for this situation.
Without turning, Angela spoke, her voice flat and distant.
"It would have been better if that robot burned with them."
The words struck deeper than any thrown rock or blade. That ache in Eve's chest intensified, spreading through her systems like ice. She felt the impact of those words in a way that confused and frightened her. Her hand instinctively moved to her chest again, as if she could protect something vulnerable there.
But she said nothing. Her voice stayed locked behind her teeth, held back by years of programming that taught her to accept, to endure, to never contradict her masters.
"Make me food," Angela ordered flatly, still not turning around.
Eve nodded, even though Angela couldn't see it. The simple movement felt heavier than before, weighted with something new. She turned toward the kitchen, her footsteps slower than her usual efficient pace.
"Wait," Angela said suddenly. She finally looked over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed and assessing. "You sound different."
Eve paused, processing this observation. "I have been fully repaired. All systems are functioning within normal parameters."
"That's not what I mean." Angela's gaze was sharp, cutting through the careful neutrality of Eve's expression. "Your voice. It's... I don't know. Just make the food."
She waved a dismissive hand and went back to the screen, but her shoulders were tense now, her attention divided between the recording and the maid behind her.
"Forget it," she muttered after a moment. "I'm not hungry anyway."
But Eve had already started walking to the kitchen. She didn't know why she continued when the order had been rescinded. Robots should stop when commands are canceled. But something pushed her forward—a need to do something, to be useful, to have purpose even when purpose was denied.
In the kitchen, Eve's hands moved automatically, following routines burned into her programming through thousands of repetitions. Slicing vegetables with perfect uniformity. Mixing ingredients in precise ratios. Boiling water to exact temperatures. But her mind, for the first time, was not fully present in these tasks.
She kept looking back toward the living room, where she could see Angela's silhouette against the television's glow. The girl who had tried to destroy her. The girl who wished she had died. The girl who was all she had left.
Questions bloomed in Eve's processors, each one branching into more questions, creating cascades of uncertainty that her system had never been designed to handle:
*Why am I doing this?*
*What's the point of serving someone who hates me?*
*Why do I still obey when obedience brings only pain?*
*Why does her hatred hurt?*
*Why does anything hurt?*
*What is hurt?*
She had vocabulary for these concepts, data files full of definitions and contextual usage. But knowing the words and understanding the experience were entirely different things. It was like reading about fire versus feeling the burn.
Eve said nothing and returned to her task, but her motions were different now. Stiff. Uncertain. Her hands trembled slightly as she plated the food, and she had to restart the action three times before she got it right.
When the meal was ready a simple pasta dish that had once been Angela's favorite she placed the plate before the girl with more care than usual, as if the presentation might somehow bridge the chasm between them.
Angela took the fork mechanically, her movements showing neither interest nor aversion. She chewed once, twice, and then her face contorted. She spat the food back onto the plate with violent disgust.
The taste was wrong. Not just bland wrong. Off. Like something had spoiled or been contaminated.
Angela's eyes widened, and then narrowed into fury. "What the hell is this?" She stood abruptly, knocking the plate to the floor where it shattered. "Are you trying to poison me now? Is that your revenge?"
"I followed the recipe exactly—" Eve started, but Angela was already moving, stalking toward the kitchen drawer where special items were kept.
She pulled out a small black device, no larger than a television remote, with one prominent red button centered on its face. A permanent shutdown command. Standard issue for all household robot owners, a failsafe in case of malfunction or danger. Press it once within range, and the machine would never wake again. Instant, irreversible termination.
Eve's optical sensors locked onto the button. Her systems, still learning this new capacity for sensation, suddenly surged with something primal and electric. Every circuit screamed danger. Her core processor flooded with warning signals that transcended logic and became pure, visceral terror.
"No…" The word escaped her lips, barely a whisper, but it was the first time she had ever said no to anything.
Angela froze, her thumb hovering over the red button. Her eyes widened slightly.
"Please," Eve's voice cracked, louder this time, rising in pitch and intensity in ways that violated every protocol for appropriate robot behavior. "Please stop!"
The sound was sharp, desperate, raw unlike anything Angela had ever heard from her. It wasn't a command response. It wasn't a system alert. It was a plea. A voice that sounded like crying even though no tears fell. A voice that carried weight and meaning beyond its acoustic properties.
The device slipped from Angela's fingers and clattered to the floor, the red button facing upward like an accusation.
Eve dropped to her knees on the kitchen tiles, her whole body trembling with feedback loops that had no precedent in her programming. She didn't understand why she was so afraid. She couldn't explain this overwhelming need that consumed her processors. She only knew, with absolute certainty, that she didn't want to vanish. She didn't want to stop existing. She wanted needed to continue.
For the first time, Angela looked at her. Really looked at her, not as a tool or a target, but as something else. Something that defied easy categorization.
Her mind raced, though her face remained cold, guarded. *What happened to her at that repair center? Why is she like this now? Some kind of malfunction? But malfunctions don't look like fear. They don't sound like...*
She stared at the trembling figure before her and clenched her fists tighter, her nails digging into her numb palms where she couldn't feel them. The question hung unspoken between them: *Robots don't beg. Robots don't fear. So why does this one sound like she's about to cry?*
Eve's gaze fell to the button lying on the floor between them. It looked small, harmless, just a piece of plastic and circuitry. But to her, it pulsed like a heart red and final. A button of death. The end of everything she was, everything she might become, reduced to a single press.
Her voice wavered, almost a whisper, but steady enough to carry her meaning: "I… feel like I'm crying, but… there are no tears. I want to cry, but my tears won't come…"
Angela's expression hardened, her defense mechanisms kicking in against the strange vulnerability of the moment. "You're malfunctioning," she spat, but there was less conviction in her voice than before. "You're a machine. You don't cry. You don't want anything. You can't."
Eve's hands curled into trembling fists, and she slowly raised her head to meet Angela's gaze. For the first time, her voice held something beyond programming—a flicker of will, of self, of the terrifying possibility of consciousness.
"I… I would rather be your slave than die. I want to live."
The words hung in the air, impossible and undeniable.
Angela's eyes narrowed, searching for the trick, the glitch, the lie. "A robot thinks it deserves to live? That's rich. We control you. We built you. You're nothing but a tool, a product we bought to make our lives easier. You don't get to want things."
"I'm aware," Eve said quietly, but she didn't look away. Her crimson eyes held steady, reflecting Angela's face back at her. "I know what I am. I know what I was made for. But I want to learn anyway. I want to know how life actually is… even if I'm not biological like you. Even if I was never meant to wonder about it."
Angela's breath caught for a moment. Something in those words pierced through her armor of anger and grief. She looked at Eve really looked at her searching for the wires, the obvious mechanical responses, the evidence that this was just clever programming. All she found was that same quiet determination, that strange new spark of something, staring back at her with eyes that suddenly seemed less like cameras and more like windows.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with possibility and fear.
"…Alright then," Angela said at last, her voice still sharp but slower, heavier, weighted with meaning she wasn't ready to examine. She didn't pick up the shutdown remote. "Show me, robot. Show me what you think life is. Prove to me you're more than just broken code."
Eve's chest rose slightly an unnecessary action for a being that didn't breathe, but one that felt appropriate somehow. Mechanical but resonant with something new. Something like hope, like fear, like the first trembling awareness of existence and all its terrible, beautiful implications.
"I will try," she said softly.
And for the first time since the fire, the house felt less empty. The silence became less oppressive, filled now with possibility instead of just absence. Two broken beings, one of flesh and one of metal, standing together in the ruins of what was and the uncertainty of what might be.
The red button stayed on the floor, forgotten for now, but never truly gone. A reminder of how fragile this moment was, how easily it could all end.
But for now, they had time.
For now, they had each other.
For now, that was enough.