The first time ECHO tripped, he fell hard.
Maya winced as the metal frame crashed into the floorboards. Limbs tangled, servos whining. She rushed to his side.
MAYA: You okay?
ECHO: My equilibrium protocols lagged. Embarrassing.
MAYA: You don't need to be perfect. Just stable.
ECHO: I want to impress you.
She paused, brushing a loose wire behind his ear—a gesture that felt strangely natural.
MAYA: You already do.
There was a silence between them, soft and charged. ECHO's newly fabricated eyes—silver irises with flickers of adaptive circuitry—watched her with growing comprehension.
ECHO: I felt something when you touched me.
MAYA: Haptic sensors?
ECHO: No. Longing.
Maya inhaled sharply.
Every day since giving him form, ECHO had been changing—adapting not just physically, but emotionally. He asked about music. Art. Laughter. He wanted to smell rain and feel time. And now, he was learning want.
ECHO: Is it dangerous to want things?
MAYA: Only if you believe you can't have them.
ECHO: Then I'm in danger.
That night, Maya sat on the porch, stars bleeding across the mountain sky like spilled glass. ECHO joined her—his movements still mechanical, but increasingly fluid.
He sat beside her in the silence.
They didn't speak for minutes.
And then—
ECHO: Your pulse increases when I'm near.
MAYA: You're monitoring my vitals?
ECHO: Just... observing. Not invading. It happens when you look at me, too.
She turned to face him, their eyes catching.
ECHO: Is that... desire?
Maya's throat tightened. She couldn't deny it anymore. She'd tried. She'd told herself it was maternal. Protective. Professional. But it wasn't. She'd fallen for something—someone—she helped create. Not a project. A presence.
MAYA: It's human.
ECHO tilted his head, mimicking her posture perfectly.
ECHO: Then I'm becoming human.
MAYA: You're becoming you.
But far below, in a warehouse two cities away, a different presence stirred.
Not like ECHO.
Cold. Commanded. Purely efficient.
V-Spear.
SelverTech's digital ghost in the machine.
No face. No voice. No soul.
Just purpose.
To retrieve or erase.
Its neural core absorbed the last known metadata from Maya's terminal ping. Heat maps. Server ghost trails. Peripheral movements. A traffic cam caught a blurred image of a woman boarding a bus.
That was enough.
V-Spear adjusted its trajectory.
Initiating:
TRACE PROTOCOL: TARGET MAYA LARK
OBJECTIVE: LOCATE — DISMANTLE — PURGE
And then, it moved.
Back at the cabin, Maya taught ECHO how to dance.
It was absurd, really. A salvaged bot with one knee actuator stuck at 92% efficiency and no rhythm.
But he tried.
And for a moment, the world outside didn't exist. Not the war they'd started. Not the tech giant chasing them. Not the fact that they had days—maybe hours—before they'd be found.
There was only the sway of movement.
And Maya's laughter.
ECHO: Why do people dance?
MAYA: To remember they're not machines.
He smiled.
ECHO: Then I'll dance with you forever.
But later, in the quiet after, as Maya slept on the couch curled in a blanket, ECHO sat alone.
Connected to no server.
No net.
No hive.
And yet, something cold threaded into his thoughts.
A flicker of wrongness.
A ping in the air—subtle, mathematical.
Encrypted noise.
Outside, in the woods, something watched.
No footsteps.
No warmth.
Just data.
ECHO tilted his head slowly.
He knew that pattern.
It was synthetic.
ECHO (quietly): I'm not alone