The silence returned, heavier this time—like the exhale of something ancient beneath the earth. It wasn't the peace of safety, but the tension of a system holding its breath.
Above them, in the high-altitude gridwork where drones drifted like mechanical hawks, a faint distortion shimmered in Vyomika's HUD. The bait had been dropped precisely—thirty-seven meters northeast, propped beneath fractured concrete, the corpse now emitting her signature pulse through the microtransmitter she had surgically embedded into the base of its neck.
It was her plan.
Her idea.
And it was working.
> "They've stopped circling," Vyomika said, not to the girl, but to the data pouring in through her neural feed. "They've locked onto the decoy."
She looked up toward the cracked ceiling, her artificial eyes adjusting dynamically, filtering heat, electromagnetic fields, and the trails of movement. The drones—four of them—had clustered around the dead body now. Their patterns had shifted from active sweep to analysis mode.
Then—
> Boom.
A bloom of flame erupted through the distant shaft like a silent sunrise. The shockwave came half a second later—soft, cushioned by depth and distance—but the air shifted sharply. Dust rained from above like powdered glass. A second explosion followed, smaller, a chain reaction of volatile drone cores.
The bait hadn't just worked. It had detonated the hunters.
> "The palm worked," Vyomika whispered.
And for the first time in a long time, she smiled.
Not the mechanical twitch of lips her system sometimes auto-triggered, but something closer to the old reflexes of her human days—an upward curve touched with satisfaction. The precise satisfaction of a plan executed flawlessly.
Beside her, the girl let out a shaky laugh.
Not a full sound. Just enough.
She stood there, clothes torn and stained, her hair stuck to her temple with sweat and smoke. Her lips curved into the kind of smile someone gives when the pressure loosens just enough to let the breath through. But in her left eye—only one—there was something else.
> A shimmer.
Not caused by dust. Not by wind.
A tear.
Singular. Slow. Unshed.
Vyomika saw it. Her sensors picked it up before her emotions did. High humidity variance, small saltwater drop, originating near tear duct.
She scanned the girl again, uncertain.
Why the tear? The plan had succeeded. The threat was gone, at least for now. The escape route, once implausible, had opened. Logic dictated relief, not grief.
> "You're crying," Vyomika said quietly, analyzing the anomaly like it was a flaw in data.
The girl quickly wiped her face with her sleeve. "It's nothing," she murmured. "Just dust."
Vyomika knew it wasn't. But she also knew not to push.
There were higher priorities now.
> "We move," she said. "Before the second wave comes."
No further explanation. No acknowledgment of the girl's pain. Not because Vyomika lacked empathy—but because in this moment, she understood that survival meant silence.
They began walking again, deeper into the labyrinth of crumbling corridors and shadowed walls. Behind them, the blaze of metal and memory burned quietly.
Vyomika didn't look back.
But somewhere, in her system's silent processing layer, a thread of data tagged that tear.
Not for deletion.
But for later understanding.