† SINISTER PUBLICATIONS†

Loud acid rain muffled the sounds of the night. Her exposed metal parts sizzled as she ran through the dead streets. Only a few flickering neon lights grazed the empty, cracked pavement of the lonely city. At night, only the dead could be heard — and every soul stayed indoors.

She paused under the broken remains of a synth-bar awning. A red neon sign buzzed overhead: “FEEL ME.” Letters stuttered in static. Her arm smoked where the rain hit—old military-grade plating fused with black-market upgrades. No insulation. No warranty. Just fire and rust.

In her hand, a small drive — a heartbeat, stolen and still warm from the lab where they’d tried to dissect it. Not her own. Not yet.

Footsteps echoed from the alley behind her. Not heavy. Careful. Measured.

Human.

“You’re late,” she rasped, voice glitching as her vocal mod cooled from the sprint. She didn’t look at him.

Raze lit a synth-cig and stepped under the awning, letting the rain burn down his bare scalp. His eyes were red from something chemical. Or maybe just from seeing her again.

“You running from the ghosts, or the dealers?” he asked.

“Both,” she said. “But one of them wants what’s in my chest. The other wants what’s in yours.”

There was something unexplainable that itched Raze in the corners of his torn mind. Maybe the loneliness mixed with constant drug abuse—his only coping mechanism to deal with the solitude of modern life. Or maybe it was the PCP-infused chemical cocktail he had just injected straight into his eyeball. But it was definitely something.

Watching Echo… the way her creator designed her made his heart flutter erroneously. She was probably more human than he could ever be, yet her metal and plastic shell proved otherwise.

“I thought you were a goner for sure,” he muttered. “How did you even make it out of there? Why’d you disobey your owner? I’m just a vagrant… a lowlife with no meaning. Yet you saved me that day — from your own master. Why?”

“I don’t know either,” she said, her voice quiet. “But something inside me told me to let you go. They were going to kill you.”

Raze took the hard drive from her hand and inspected it. It was tech he’d never seen before — alien, elegant — but nothing he couldn’t crack. Years of living on the edge, stealing, and rigging tech had given him the wealth to create and destroy like a god.

“Follow me.”

He led her through a rear entrance into a hidden basement. The light flickered as Echo stepped inside and froze.

Salvaged tech from the remnants of the Mars War. Alien interface panels. New-age systems from deals struck between humans and the Voss — the ancient species that had dragged humanity from Type 0 to Type 2 civilization.

A convenient transaction. The Voss needed humanity’s ability to populate like roaches to save them from attrition in their universal war against the Kreig.

“What… is all this?” Echo whispered.

“Artifacts of a deal we never really understood,” Raze said. “We gave them blood. They gave us toys.”

He plugged the drive in. The machine didn’t boot. It breathed. A symbol flickered on screen — alien, jagged.

SUBJECT E–0–C–H–0
STATUS: UNREGISTERED SENTIENCE
PRIORITY THREAT LEVEL: ███████

Echo’s eyes widened. “They were tracking me…”

“No,” Raze said. “You were made to track them.”

Raze hooked her up to his terminal to run diagnostics. Her eyes flickered, damaged.

“No. No.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling the impending doom.

“Your core is severely damaged. I’m gonna have to rewire you,” he replied, his voice crackled.

He stood silent, thinking. Then — it hit him.

“I know. I have just the right thing.”

She stood up as he jolted with excitement. “What exactttt…ly is going on?” she said, glitching.

He reached over, disconnected her, and carried her to a locked room.

Inside: a cloning chamber.

“Everything will be okay, darling. Don’t be afraid.”

He connected her to the machine. Her body froze — her light dimmed into the void.

The programming chip was extracted, scanned, and installed into the replication drive. Her entire being — memories, emotions, code — transferred in seconds.

“Initiating Replication,” the machine blurted.

He stepped back. Her old body was swallowed by organic ooze and nanobots. Slowly, a new form emerged.

A human silhouette. Brown complexion. Gray-blue eyes. A body grown, not built.

He placed the drive into her new chest cavity.

She gasped.

“I’m… still alive?”

She stared at her shaking hands. Her skin felt real. Too real.

Raze held up a mirror.

She locked eyes with herself.

“I can feel my heartbeat…” she whispered.

“You have one now,” Raze said, low and tired.

“I feel like I’m… breaking.”

“You’re not,” he said. “You’re just being born.”

She walked to the cracked window and looked out. The city blinked in the distance — neon dreams and digital ghosts.

“I’m not theirs,” she said quietly.

She turned to him.

“But I’m not yours either.”

I AM MINE

She looked at him again, her reflection still fresh in her mind, as if she’d been born seconds ago and already aged years.

“I am… mine?”

Raze nodded slowly, swallowing something he’d never admit was emotion.

“You saved my life,” he said.
“The only thing I could do for you… was give you one.”

Tears rolled silently down her new cheeks — her first.

They weren’t synthetic.

And for the first time since the acid rain fell from above,
something in this dead world felt alive again.