A blinding light erupts, swallowing the world whole. For a moment I think it's the end. A sound too loud to belong to reality, brightness that tears the sky open, then nothing. Everything folds inward, thought and sight burning out at the same time.
Darkness follows. Not the soft kind. Heavy darkness. It presses on me like deep water. Somewhere far away, metal screams. Then a sharp crackle of electricity.
A voice cuts through the static.
"Still breathing, are you? Huh. That's new."
Rough. Human. A voice that has been sandblasted by too many storms. Something cold touches my neck. A spark jumps. My body jerks violently, then fades again into black.
When I wake, I am staring at a ceiling patched together from scavenged panels. The air smells like oil, dust, and burnt copper. My breath rasps. A lone bulb swings overhead, its dim light crawling across a room full of stacked scrap and half-dissected machines.
"Cadence," I whisper.
Her voice glitches. "Reinitialising. Partial system reboot. I am… operational."
A figure steps into the light.
"Don't talk too much," the man says. "You'll set off something important, and I prefer things not exploding today."
He moves closer. His clothes are layers of fabric and insulation stitching. Tools hang from belts that probably predate civilization. His goggles are cracked. His hair is a metallic tangle. A scar drags down his cheek.
He smells like solvent and bad decisions.
"Who are you?" I ask.
"Elias Wren," he says. "Hermit, mechanic, nuisance. Depends on who you ask."
I try to sit. A sharp flash runs through my shoulder. Not pain. More like an electrical warning firing through bone.
My stomach twists when I look down. The stump of my left arm is wrapped in cloth soaked with sealant, a crude metal brace bolted across it. It hisses faintly with leaking pressure.
Wren notices. "Don't poke it. It's holding for now."
"You didn't reattach it."
He snorts. "With what? My spare arm tree out the back? You're lucky I stopped the coolant from flooding the place. One wrong move and you'd have melted through the floor."
He turns back to his workbench. Wires, metal plates, glowing fragments. Chaos, but intentional chaos. His hands flit across the mess like caffeinated spiders.
"I stabilised your systems," he says. "Fused some cracked lines, patched the leak, isolated your neural ports before they cooked your brain. Basic first aid, assuming your patient is half-machine, half-corpse."
"Appreciate the poetry."
"You're welcome," he mutters. "You were twitching when I found you. Thought the sand was finishing the job. Then I saw a light still blinking in your chest. Never could resist a puzzle."
He glances at me, voice dropping. "You flatlined, you know. Dead as driftwood. Had to hit you with a surge from my generator. Jump-started what was left. Technically, you owe me your second death."
He smirks. "Oh, and that big metal friend standing over you? I dealt with it. Blasted it with a disruptor I built from scrap. I hit it so hard its blueprints filed for divorce. Didn't even see it coming."
Cadence hums faintly. "Neural stabilisation achieved. Crude but functional. Electromagnetic discharge detected at close range. His claim is accurate."
"Crude?" Wren barks a laugh. "She's got attitude. Good sign. Means the AI is intact. Rare, that."
"She has a name," I say.
"Of course she does," he says. "Naming the voices makes people trust them."
He examines me again, goggles reflecting the yellow glow from my arm. "You're early-gen work, aren't you? Prototype stuff. Bio-mech grafting. Neural threading. That's old science. Dangerous science."
"I wouldn't know."
"Wouldn't expect you to. They usually alter memories before the interface." He points a screwdriver at my head. "But you're different. You've got an unrestricted AI. No governor. No leash."
"Different how?"
"Yours learns, tour objective not predetermined," he says, grinning. "It grows. It evolves. Dangerous thing to give a human mind."
Cadence lowers her voice. "He is… not incorrect."
Wren cackles. "Look at that. She agrees. You're walking proof of every terrible idea that built this wasteland."
I scan the walls. Layers of sketches, notes, symbols. Machines that never existed. Diagrams that overlap like fever hallucinations. Words like "overdrive," "sync," and "hard-light" circled over and over.
"You live here?" I ask.
"Where else? The towers are death traps. The dunes eat the living. Here I can think. Usually."
He taps a rusted panel. "I've seen them all. The sentries. Ten classes. Ten designs. Each worse than the last. Class 10, like the one you fought? Child's toy. By Class 2 or 3 they were shrugging off artillery."
He leans close, eyes too bright. "But you. You could surpass all of them."
Cadence whispers, "Unverified."
"Call it prophecy," Wren mutters.
I look at my missing arm. "Not with this."
He waves the comment away. "You're missing a limb, not potential. You'll find replacements. One at a time, though. Your neural matrix can only bind one new component at once. Add too many, and your brain melts. Seen it. Smelled it."
"One at a time," I repeat.
"Exactly. Grow slow or die fast."
He returns to his work, hands moving with manic precision. Sparks flicker.
"You said you found me," I ask. "Where?"
"By the tower. You and that sentry nearly levelled the ridge. I dragged you out before the wreck collapsed. You were leaking energy like a cracked reactor. Rerouted a bit from the sentry's core to keep you alive."
Cadence speaks softly. "Energy stable."
Wren raises his hands dramatically. "See? Miracle worker."
"You're insane."
"Oh, absolutely. Best qualification in the wasteland."
He walks to the doorway, staring out at the dunes. "The desert doesn't care what built you. Human or machine, it grinds us all down eventually. But the ones who keep moving… those rewrite the story."
I lean back against the wall. My systems hum in tired harmony. "You're not wrong."
"I'm never wrong," he says. His eye twitches immediately afterward.
Cadence whispers. "Recommend rest. Neural link still calibrating."
The shack creaks as the wind pushes against it. Dust drifts through the light. Wren mutters to himself about signals, ghosts, and the shape of static.
"Wren," I say quietly. "Thank you."
He waves a distracted hand. "Don't thank me yet. You were dead when I found you. There's always a chance you'll return to that state soon."
My vision softens. The flickering bulb stretches into a thin blur. I let my eye close.
Cadence is the last voice I hear. "Rest, Iris. You are stable."
The room fades into the soft hiss of wind and the quiet ramblings of a madman who saved my life.