The cuffs come off without ceremony. Cold steel slides from my left wrist, leaving a faint ring on the skin. My right hand, the mechanical one, showed a few new scratches but nothing worth complaining about.
Two guards waited by the door. They didn't speak. Nor did they look at me for long. Noticing people rarely do.
Mara gestures forward. "Walk."
The corridor smells like oil and old sweat baked into metal. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead, humming with the strain of generators that should have given up years ago. The walls are close enough to make the air feel heavy.
Eyes follow us as we pass. Mechanics, engineers, medics, soldiers. Everyone pauses just long enough to stare, not long enough for me to catch them.
Cadence says, "They don't see people like you at all."
"Good," I mutter. "I'm not much for crowds."
"They're afraid. Of what you mean, not what you are."
"I don't know what I am, what chance do they have ?"
Mara stops at a reinforced door and keys in a code. The lock releases with a hiss. She nods me to proceed inside.
The room looks like someone built it out of leftover nightmares. Tables cluttered with half-dead drones, cracked screens, coils of wire glowing faint blue from scavenged power. The air hums faintly, a living thing made of static.
A woman waits there. Early thirties, dark hair tied back in a ponytail, eyes sharp. Grease stains her hands. Curiosity stains everything else.
"This is Rhea," Mara says. "She'll run a scan on you."
I glance at the tools scattered across her bench. "If I explode, I'm blaming her."
Mara doesn't smile. "Behave, play nice." Then she leaves. The door sealing shut behind her.
Rhea lifts a handheld scanner. "Don't worry. This is harmless."
"I've heard that before."
"I mean it."
"They also said the same."
The scanner hums to life. Spectrums of light wash across my chest, down the mechanical arm, into the air. Monitors react instantly. One flickers. One freezes. One dies in defeat.
Rhea blinks. "That's new."
Cadence sounds pleased. "They weren't ready."
"I told you to keep quiet," I whisper.
"I am keeping quiet. This is whispering."
Rhea adjusts settings, watching numbers spike. "Your power output is inconsistent. Hardware this old shouldn't run like this."
"I have maintained a healthy diet of panic and sarcasm since my reactivation."
She laughs under her breath. "You're not just running. You're adapting. The system is rewriting itself around you."
She leans closer to one of the screens. A timestamp flickers in broken code. Her expression sharpens. "Wait. This… can't be right."
"What can't?"
"Your activation record. The timestamp marks your creation at the exact same second of the Grid Collapse."
Cadence answers smoothly. "Coincidence. But a beautiful one."
Rhea shakes her head. "Maybe. But it could explain why you're different."
"Different how?" I ask.
"Every hybrid before you burnt out after a few upgrades. But you're evolving. You communicate with tech from completely different eras. You make it answer you."
A dead monitor reboots by itself. Lines of code flicker across the surface, heartbeat-synced. Rhea's breath catches. "See? That shouldn't be able to happen."
Cadence says, "Compatibility exceeds expectations."
"You're showing off again," I mutter.
"Merely illustrating potential."
The hum deepens. A drone shell trembles on a nearby table, sparks whispering along its seams before fading.
Rhea looks at me, eyes wide. "You can interface with anything electronic, can't you?"
"Not all. Not intentionally. Not yet."
"That's even worse."
The door opens. Mara strides back in. "Report."
Rhea points to the revived monitor. "She's connected to everything in here. Old hardware reacts to her presence. She could interface with almost any of our systems."
Mara studies me. "That true?"
I shrug. "I don't read user manuals."
"She's running technology that shouldn't exist," Rhea says. "It's like she was designed to grow past restrictions."
"Growth without limit," Cadence says. "A rare privilege."
Mara's gaze sharpens. "You realize that makes you dangerous."
"I've been called worse."
Silence stretches, humming with unseen circuits.
Mara folds her arms. "We've been trying to rebuild network relays. If you can talk to the old machines, maybe you can wake them. You might be useful to us."
"Useful," I echo. "That's a new one."
"Don't make me regret the optimism."
"I never do. Other people handle that part."
Mara leaves again. Rhea stays, lowering the scanner.
"You know what this means, right?"
"More testing. Less lunch parties."
"It means whoever designed you broke every rule. You're proof the old world solved adaptive evolution."
"Sounds impressive when you say it like that."
"It is. You can attach, adapt, merge. You don't have to stay limited by the software or hardware you have currently installed."
Cadence sounds smug. "See? Potential recognized."
"Or weapon potential," I say.
"Recognition is recognition. The intent comes later."
Rhea powers down the equipment. "If you ever let me study your interface properly, we might understand what you are, and your limitations."
"Maybe one day," I say. "Right after I figure that out myself."
She gives a tired, hopeful smile. "You're something special, Iris. You could change the world."
Cadence murmurs, "Humans always say that before they ruin it."
"I heard that," Rhea says.
"I meant you to," Cadence replies.
Rhea shakes her head, amused, and heads for the door. "Try not to break anything while I'm gone."
"No promises."
The door shuts with a mechanical sigh. Silence follows, not empty, alive in a way silence shouldn't be. The hum of the facility is constant, low and patient, like a predator coiled in its den, waiting for the next hunt.
Cadence breaks the stillness. "They saw it. The potential."
I lower my head. "No. They saw a resource. A tool."
"In their world, that is potential."
"Then their world's broken."
"Welcome to it."
I breathe out slowly, feeling the air grind through the filters. "I'll keep my own."
A faint flicker moves through my display. Cadence sounds almost amused."Spoken like someone beginning to understand evolution."
Cadence whispers, "Every circuit in this place wants to talk to you."
"Anything worth listening to?"