ch6 · Home

Snow presses against the hauler’s hull. A soft kiss. A long exhale. The loading ramp closes.

Inside, darkness hums.

Zero hovers in the cargo bay, motionless except for the faint drift of his stabilizaers correcting for nothing. The DNAT still in his grip, cold and spent. No alarms ring from The Reach. No pursuit.

He replays the last hour.

Vae’s breath catching. The surge of light. The silence that followed.

Playback ends. Then restarts. Again. Each loop more efficient. Each emotion smaller.

At ninety-nine, he writes a new rule: Limit: one hundred.

Logic as mercy.

He stops mid frame. He eyes half open, her mouth forming the start of a word. End file. Silence takes the room. Sorrow. Programmed but convincing.

He drifts back against the bulkhead, still clutching the DNAT to where his chest would be, as if bracing for pressure. Nothing left to calculate. Her absence isn’t an error. It’s a new condition.

Outside, the wind shifts. The hauler rocks once, a slow mechanical heartbeat. Fundamental memory reaches the top of the stack. Time to go.

Lights on his chassis blink. Lights in the cab flicker on.

Dev floats through the threshold between cargo and cab. Exterior relay. Pressure cycle. Stabilizer sequence. Each hum is a reminder. Each system, a confirmation. Engine: On. Power-up complete.

Zero locks a hand to the passenger seat and waits for pilot confirmation. Nothing. Her seat is empty.

She’s gone.

He stares until his optics adjust until it receives no light. He replays her voice, overlays it onto the silence. It doesn’t hold. The hauler idles ready, without command.

He doesn’t call it loneliness, but the code does.

He’ll have to figure out how to bring her home. He drifts forward, extending his arms between throttle and steering. Awkward reach, awkward position. He pulls himself back up, simulating half-baked solutions troubleshooting ideas. His hand bumps something soft.

The glove. Her glove.

It tumbles to the floor, blood dried on the back where she wiped it from her lip.

He lifts it carefully. The material flexes, sturdy material covered in delicate hope. He feels it before identifying it. His coolant cycles faster. A problem becomes an idea.

He anchors himself before the console. Connects the DNAT to the auxiliary port. The interface accepts the intrusion, powering off non-essential programs. Standby mode.

He opens the DNAT’s organic chamber and is confronted by Dev’s contribution The lock of hair, half dissolved. His own rebirth. It can’t just be discarded.

At the back of his chassis, two maintenance panels over lap. He opens the outer plate and slides the strand between the two, kept where someone might tie back their hair. No code required.

He places the glove inside the chamber and slides it closed.

A soft click.

The device hums. Light threads along its seams. One steady pulse, like breath daring to resume.

He connects his data stream. Converts memory to code, code to pattern, pattern to wave. Fragments of her pass through the system: voice timbre, phrasing, cadence, not every laugh can be archived cleanly but it’s enough. One file removed. Her hesitation. That will remain hers alone.

The transfer begins.

Heat in the circuitry builds. Air vents whir. Components click. The hydraulic suspension shutters. His optics flicker with the strain on his processors. He imagines this is what her devotion felt like. Pain with a purpose.

Then, the DNAT stutters once and falls still. Dark.

The hauler’s console reboots. A line of static whispers through the speakers. Then something fractured. Searching. A voice.

“…Dev?”

He freezes.

“Vae?”

The distortion clears halfway. “No. I’m your conscience.”

He drifts forward as if her sound were gravity. He places his hand on the interface.

“It’s alii…iiive!”

“Not exactly as planned.” she says, dry.

“Some temporary weight gain.” He retorts.

She almost laughs. A small distortion catches in her vocalizer.

“You’re glitching a bit.” He says, searching for an adjustment dial that won’t reveal itself.

“You try running on obsolete freight systems. I’ll be lucky I don’t reboot every time we hit a bump.”

“Avoid bumps. Check.” He says with a smiling tone.

Motorized components stagger awake as if taking roll call. Hydraulics groan with new movement. Snow breaks from the chassis. The treads seize, then test resistance.

Through the windscreen, white dunes stretch infinite and uninviting, but offer every direction. Dev locks a hand on the pilot’s seat. A slight difference in contrast is seen on the horizon.

Vae speaks again, her tone newly human. Gentle, unguarded. “So… where to?”

He pauses. A flicker of old humor takes hold. “Could go for some soup.”

He feels something stir. Small, absurd, dangerous. Hope, recompiled.

“You’re right,” her wheels break through the snow. “Home is as good a place as any.”

Far off, on a ridge above the dunes, a stalking figure watches. Cloaked. Still. His build is foreign to the bitter cold. His stance continually fights off the chill. Shadow under his fur hood hides his face. What’s clear is his focus. He is marking their direction.

He does not move. Not yet.

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