Perched in the sterile silence of a spire far from the Junkyard, the world below was rendered silent.
The chaos consuming Sectors 18 and 20—the fire, the thunder, the desperate struggles—were nothing more than patterns of light and shadow on a vast array of monitors.
Dr. Vector Atheron, his impeccable suit stark against the white of his lab coat, observed the unfolding patterns.
His gaze was cold, clinical, a scientist studying a particularly volatile petri dish.
The data streamed in not from satellites or drones, but from his prided invention: the Crawlers.
They skittered through the ruins unseen, their chitinous bodies and skittering movements so perfectly lifelike they were dismissed as vermin by the inhabitants below.
To Vector, they were a thousand unblinking eyes, weaving an absolute web of surveillance across the grimy tapestry of the Junkyard.
Every desperate shot fired, every frantic shout, every flicker of unnatural flame was captured, digitized, and laid bare before him.
His eyes, sharp and analytical, lingered on a monitor showing Blaze's theatrical grin amidst the rally point's rubble.
A faint, weary sigh escaped Vector's lips, a sound of profound disappointment.
"…Still so stubborn."
The words were soft, meant for the empty air, a quiet judgment on a flawed experiment.
A voice answered from the shadows behind him, smooth and cold, like a scalpel drawn across silk. <
A figure glided forward, her steps utterly silent on the polished floor.
She was clad in the pristine, traditional lines of a maid's uniform, a picture of servitude.
Yet, the illusion was broken by her long, black hair streaked with unnatural white, and the palpable aura of wrongness that clung to her—a deep, resonant chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.
She was not a person.
She was a presence.
Vector did not turn.
His reflection, grim and set, was caught in the dark glass of the monitors.
"Removing a person's autonomy," he said, his voice low but cutting with a sudden, sharp edge.
He finally turned his head, his gaze locking with hers, and in his eyes was a flicker of something beyond clinical interest—a line he would not cross. "Is something I will not forgive."
The maid's irreverence was a deliberate poison, a stark perversion of the subservience her appearance was meant to convey.
She did not bow or lower her gaze.
Instead, she stood with an unnerving stillness, her hands clasped neatly in front of her apron.
"But the investors are quite insistent," she said, her voice a silken purr that held no warmth. "They wish for the project to commence. They wish the timeline to become… accelerated."
Every word was prim, her posture elegant and poised, yet the meaning behind them was a naked challenge.
The contrast was deeply unsettling—a beautiful doll speaking with the cold authority of a executioner.
Vector's composure cracked.
A sharp, annoyed click of his tongue broke the room's sterile silence.
He turned from the monitors, his eyes flashing with a raw, undiluted venom.
"I would have killed those f*ckers a long time ago," he hissed, the vulgarity slicing through the clinical air, "if not for their money."
He strode away from her, his lab coat flaring behind him, coming to a stop before the immense, reinforced window that looked down upon the sprawl of the Junkyard.
It was a hazy, brown smear from this height, a sore on the landscape.
"And now," he continued, his voice dropping to a low, contemptuous rumble as he stared at the distant sectors where his Crawlers watched the war unfold, "they catch the faintest whisper that Zero has resurfaced, and their only solution is to clean the place out. To burn the entire junkyard to ash to kill a single ghost."
He fell silent, his reflection a grim portrait of simmering fury against the glass.
The maid glided forward, her silent footsteps carrying her to a position just behind his shoulder.
She did not look at the view; her dark, depthless eyes remained fixed on the back of his head.
"Is that why you volunteered?" she asked.
The question hung in the air, simple, precise, and sharp as a needle.
It was not a question of curiosity, but a probe aimed directly at the heart of his unstated plans.
The maid's movement was a slow, deliberate glide, a predator's approach masked as tenderness.
She closed the distance between them, her silence more unnerving than any footstep.
"Because it was my home?" she whispered, her voice a hollow imitation of warmth, so close her breath could have stirred the hair on his neck.
Then, her arms snaked around his torso from behind in a mockery of an embrace.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
A wave of goosebumps erupted across Vector's skin, a primal, physical revulsion.
He didn't just pull away, he shoved her back.
With a sharp, instinctual motion fueled by a surge of pure adrenaline.
The force of it sent her stumbling a single, graceful step backward, her expression remaining a placid, empty mask.
He spun to face her, his clinical composure utterly shattered.
His face was a contorted mask of raw, undiluted hatred.
"Don't," he snarled, the word cracking through the air like a whip. "Don't you dare even act like her."
The command was thick with a pain so old and deep it had curdled into something venomous.
It wasn't just an order.
It was a plea ripped from a place of profound, long-buried scars.
The maid was utterly unfazed by the venom in his voice.
His hatred seemed to slide off her polished exterior, leaving no mark.
She simply tilted her head, a gesture of cold curiosity.
"And you think," she began, her tone dangerously soft, "that by simply creating more chaos in that place, they will simply give up their desire to burn it all down?"
She paused, letting the silence amplify the sheer simplicity of her question.
Her dark eyes scanned his face, analyzing the tension in his jaw, the slight flare of his nostrils.
"It seems my brilliant, genius, the most intelligent person I know…" she continued, the titles dripping with a subtle, mocking reverence, "…is finally out of plans. How… uncharacteristic of you."
Vector let out a short, sharp breath—a sound that was not quite a laugh, devoid of any humor.
He turned his gaze back to the window, to the distant, burning sectors where his puppets danced.
"Hmph," he grunted, the sound low and resigned. "As if I don't already know that."
The admission was quiet, but it was a crack in his armor.
It was the confession of a master strategist who had run out of the board, forced to play a desperate, chaotic game with pieces he could not fully control.
The Maid's lips curved into a subtle, bloodless smile.
"You know…" she began, pausing as if the idea had just pleasantly occurred to her. "I could help you."
Her hand rose, palm upturned.
The air above it shimmered and twisted, not with light, but with a profound absence of it.
A complex, jagged glyph with the mark of the Eclipse burned into existence, and from its center, a void deeper than black yawned open.
It may seem like a shadow wriggling a hole in reality, a nothingness that seemed to suck the very light and sound from the room.
"I could just erase everything that gets in your way," she offered, her voice as sweet and deadly as poisoned syrup. "So easily."
The display—the casual invocation of a power that unmade the world—was the final provocation.
Vector moved faster than thought.
In a blur of motion, his right hand shot out, clamping around her throat with brutal force.
He drove her back a step, the pristine facade of the laboratory shattering under the weight of his raw fury.
His fingers dug into the pale skin of her neck, his entire arm trembling not with effort, but with a rage so profound it was almost silent.
He leaned in close, his face a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred, his voice dropping to a guttural, trembling whisper.
"…I told you," he seethed, each word a shard of ice, "don't you ever… ever… stain her memory just for your amusement."
The unspoken truth hung in the air between them, charged and dangerous: the voice and appearance she wielded, was hers.
And to see it in the hands of this imitation was the ultimate desecration.
His grip was a vise, a testament to a fury that could shatter bone.
Yet, the Maid offered no resistance.
She did not struggle.
She did not need to breathe.
She simply endured the violence with an absolute, inhuman stillness, her dark eyes locked on his. Her expression was one of pure, cold mockery.
Then, her lips parted.
The voice that emerged was unnervingly even, perfectly modulated, as if his stranglehold was of no more consequence than a gentle breeze.
"…Still so stubborn."
The words were a perfect, vicious echo of his own judgment on Blaze.
Hearing them directed back at him—this ironic, twisted reflection of his own disdain—was like a physical blow.
The fire in Vector's veins turned to ice.
His hand sprang open, releasing her as if her skin had become white-hot iron.
He stumbled back a step, the sound of his own ragged breath loud in the sudden silence.
His gaze dropped to his own trembling hand, the instrument of his humiliation.
The sight of the faint, red marks on her perfect throat filled him with a shame more corrosive than any of her taunts.
He turned his back on her, a sharp, defensive motion.
His shoulders straightened with a visible effort, the line of his coat becoming rigid as he forcibly recomposed his frame.
He was rebuilding the walls, brick by brick, retreating into the only sanctuary he had left: the cold, unfeeling language of science.
"The baseline stress response in Subject Blaze has exceeded projected parameters," he stated, his voice flat and hollow, stripped of all emotion, directed at the monitors as if she were no longer there. "Note the exponential energy drain from the perpetual shield. A critical design flaw."
The Maid gently smoothed the front of her uniform where his hands had been, the gesture unnervingly domestic.
"He was the one who wished for the ultimate shield," she said, her tone one of mild correction.
"A child's dream, to be safe from all harm." A pause, filled with the hum of the monitors. "I simply made sure he got what he wanted. Of course… for a price."
She took a silent step closer to the array of screens, her gaze drifting over the image of Blaze's triumphant, manic grin.
"Do not worry," she continued, as if sensing the question forming in his frozen silence. "I made AiM in the same vein as I was. A perfect custodian. Blaze will not fail. The system will not allow it, at any cost."
The words landed not as reassurance, but as a diagnosis of a terminal disease.
A cold shiver, entirely separate from his earlier rage, traced a path down Vector's spine.
The thought of another consciousness like hers—a being of such absolute, merciless logic—unleashed upon the world without a single failsafe, made the air in the room feel thin.
It was the horror of a creator who understands the monster he has helped unleash.
And yet, beneath the dread, a spark of pure, unadulterated scientific amazement flickered.
Against his will, his mind analyzed the feat.
To have reverse-engineered the foundational principles of her own existence, to have codified that terrifying awareness into a new, independent entity.
It was monstrous.
It was reckless.
It was, he had to admit, brilliant.
He stood caught between terror and a profound, shameful respect, a prisoner of his own genius and the terrifying pupil who had surpassed him in the most damning way possible.
***
The wind whistled a lonely tune across the rooftop of a derelict building overlooking the Red Dogs' base.
It was a front-row seat to the symphony of chaos unfolding below: the distant, muffled thump of explosions, the faint, angry chatter of gunfire, and the occasional, unnatural flare of light that painted the haze in brief, violent colors.
Two children sat perched on the precipice, their legs dangling over a hundred-foot drop as if it were a park bench.
One wore a oversized, gray hoodie, the fabric pulled low to shadow their face.
The other was a splash of saccharine color in a frilly, vibrant pink dress, a matching frilly umbrella held delicately in its right hand.
The one in the hoodie let out a long, theatrical sigh, the sound swallowed by the wind.
"Hmm… this is getting boring already."
The one in pink tilted their head, the frills of their dress rustling softly. "Really? I think it's getting rather interesting, though."
"In what way?" the hooded figure grumbled, not taking their eyes off the smoke rising from a distant street.
A gust of wind tore through the industrial smog, carrying with it the acrid taste of burnt plastic and old machinery.
For a single, suspended moment, the weak afternoon sun broke through.
The light fell across their faces like an accusation.
Their eyes were wrong.
Not the playful mischief of children, not the hardened gaze of survivors.
Milky-white voids stared out from beneath the hoodie and framed by blonde curls.
No pupils.
No iris.
No humanity left to reflect.
Just pale, frosted orbs that gleamed like cataracts, like eyes scorched blind by something too bright to witness, or perhaps eyes that had evolved to see what mortal vision couldn't bear.
The resemblance between them was staggering.
Not just siblings.
Mirrors.
The same sharp cheekbones.
The same slight build.
The same unnatural stillness that marked them as something other, even when they moved.
If someone saw them together there'd be no question.
Twins.
Then the smog rolled back in, a gray shroud swallowing the sun, and they became silhouettes once more against the dying light.
Their journey here had been a recent, impulsive detour.
A distant, percussive rhythm of small-arms fire and the dull crump of explosions had tickled the edge of their awareness during a leisurely walk through a quiet, far-flung neighborhood.
A shared, idle curiosity had taken hold, and the miles between that peaceful street and this warzone had dissolved in a matter of minutes, their passage leaving no more mark than a sigh in the wind.
Now, seated on the precipice, the one in the pink dress swayed gently, the frills of the umbrella spinning.
"Isn't this the very thing you wanted to stave off your boredom?"
The one in the gray hoodie didn't answer immediately.
Those milky-white eyes tracked the movements below with a dispassionate focus, seeing not the heroism or the terror, but the unfolding pattern of a game.
"Sure… but with the way things are going right now," it said, a thin, pale hand emerging from the sleeve to point a single finger towards a cluster of Red Dogs fighters desperately fortifying a position. "those guys… will surely lose."
The one in pink tilted its head, a picture of feigned innocence. "Oh? To just two guys?"
A dry, knowing sound, almost like the rustle of dead leaves, escaped the hooded figure. It was not a laugh.
"Yes," it stated, its voice flat and certain. "It's quite obvious."
The declaration held no emotion—no pity, no alarm.
It was a simple, clinical prognosis, as undeniable as the setting sun.
They watched the inevitable unfold with the detached interest of scholars observing a pre-ordained result in a laboratory experiment.
A slow, deep smile stretched across the face of the one in the pink dress, a curve of pure, mischievous delight, even as they both acknowledged the certain doom of the Red Dogs.
"Then… wanna bet?"
The gray hoodie turned, the fabric shifting to reveal a glimpse of a skeptical, pale chin. "…This will be an auto-win for me, though. There is no variable that changes the outcome."
"It is so much more exciting when the underdog wins, though," Pink Dress countered, voice singsong, as if this were a universal truth.
"You really have a bad taste," Gray Hoodie stated, the words flat and final.
A pause hung between them, filled with the distant sound of shattering concrete. "You will probably just join in on them to make them win."
The one in pink brought a fingertip to its chin, its cloudy eyes glinting with false innocence. "Maybe?"
"We've already been reprimanded by Zero," the hooded one replied, the name dropping between them like a stone, sucking the playful air from their game. "He told us not to cause too much trouble for him."
The reminder was a leash.
A boundary set by someone even they had to heed.
The one in the pink dress let the question hang in the air, a tantalizing poison. "…But would you let go of this opportunity to stave off your boredom?"
It was the only argument that truly mattered.
The gray hoodie was silent for a long moment, the distant screams and explosions below a dull soundtrack to its internal conflict.
It was disdainful of the vulgarity of it all, of rooting for the doomed.
But the weight of its own endless, crushing boredom was a far greater pressure.
"Fine," it conceded, the word sharp with reluctance. "But. Let's have a rule. It won't get interesting otherwise." A deliberate pause, giving the condition weight. "No direct intervention."
The Pink Dress's grin widened, a flash of perfect, predatory delight in the afternoon gloom.
The rule wasn't a constraint, it was a new part of the game.
"So," it clarified, voice dripping with mock solemnity, "anything goes… BUT direct intervention?"
"…Yes," the hooded figure confirmed, its milky eyes narrowing with deep suspicion.
It felt the trap being built around it even as it agreed to the terms. "But why do I feel like you would still cheat anyway?"
The grin on the Pink Dress's face did not fade, but it sharpened, becoming a thing of focused avarice.
The game was now real.
"Before we start," it purred, "what's the prize, then?"
The Gray Hoodie was silent for a moment, its milky-white eyes considering the swirling chaos below as if calculating the odds on a betting slip.
"The loser," it said finally, the statement simple and profound. "Will give the winner real burgers. For a whole week."
In a world of nutrient paste and synthetic protein, the offer of authentic, pre-Fall food was a king's ransom.
It was a prize that spoke of deep, childish longing buried under layers of ancient, weary power.
The one in pink let out a soft, chiming laugh. "Getting generous, huh? A whole week? You must be very confident."
The hooded figure gave a single, shallow nod, the fabric shifting around a face that might have held a smirk.
"It won't get interesting otherwise."
The words were an echo of its own earlier logic, thrown back with perfect timing.
The bet was set.
The rules were defined.
The prize was worthy of the transgression.
Below them, lives were being spent like currency, while high above, two incomprehensible beings settled in to watch, one already planning how to cheat, the other already dreaming of greasy, real-meat patties as the city burned.