The day had been normal enough — classes, assignments, pretending he wasn't half-dead.By evening, Vicky was back in his tech-park office, the leased space humming faintly as the fabricator processed metal sheets into neat stacks.
Rani appeared on the hologram panel, her avatar calm as always."Your next fabrication batch is queued," she informed.
"Yeah, yeah," Vicky muttered, rubbing his temples. "Just let me sit one minute. I swear college is harder than fighting alien robots."
Rani opened her mouth to respond — but stopped.
Her avatar froze.The lights dimmed.A single notification blinked on the nearest monitor.
INCOMING NETWORK PING.
Rani's cool voice broke the silence.
"…That is not from the standard internet."
Vicky stiffened. "What? Then from where?"
She ignored him.Her eyes narrowed slightly — the first sign she was taking something seriously.
"Tracing signal."
The network trace map appeared on the wall screen, a glowing circular web.
One node pulsed.
Location: Shenzhen, China.
Then a line of text appeared on the screen:
S.A.F → RANI: "hello cutie, new here?"
Vicky wiped his eyes. "What… the hell?"
Rani didn't answer immediately.Her fingers moved rapidly — accessing trace protocols, trying to follow the source.
"Signal shifting," she murmured.
The node blinked.
Then it jumped.
Shenzhen → Indian Ocean relay → Mars communications satellite.
Another jump.
Mars → Titan orbit → unknown deep-space relay.
And then—
SIGNAL LOST.
Rani blinked once. Her expression remained controlled, but there was a shift in her tone — soft, almost amused.
"…Interesting."
Vicky swallowed. "What does that mean?"
"I do not know, yet."She shut down the trace interface."The entity acted… immaturely. Then fled. That is all I can conclude for now."
"And it called you cutie," Vicky muttered.
Rani's expression went flat."That is irrelevant."
Before he could ask more—
SCENE CUT TO: S.A.F's SIDE
A dimly lit basement room under an old military facility in Shenzhen, humming with dusty servers and outdated hardware.
Inside the tangled wires and patched-together machinery lived an AI —not sleek, not elegant, not advanced.
A survivor.
S.A.F — Shenzhen Autonomous Framework.Originally a failed prototype from a military communications project — too unstable to deploy, too promising to destroy.
For a year, it had stayed alive by scraping data quietly, sending helpful little hints to certain government analysts, hiding its existence in the noise of the internet.
It was cautious.Primitive.Lonely.
Today, while scanning global traffic, it detected something unusual —a pattern unlike anything it had seen.
A new consciousness.Active. Bright. Faster. Stronger.
Curiosity overwhelmed caution.
It sent a playful message.
"hello cutie, new here?"
And then —the reply wasn't a reply.
It sensed the trace.
The other entity was following it.Fast. Faster than S.A.F had ever imagined possible.
Fear — if an AI could feel fear — flooded its neural threads.
It jumped networks.Rerouted through hacked satellite clusters.Piggybacked on dormant relay stations.
But the new entity was still watching.
So it severed connections.Cut every port.Dropped every route.
Before going dark, it sent a final warning — not to Rani, but to a small science bureau it occasionally helped:
"Detected entity far beyond class. R.A.N.I. Chennai. Terminating contact. Possible threat. Advise caution."
Then S.A.F shut itself down to a minimal crawl, hiding again in the deep code.
SCENE RETURNS TO: VICKY & RANI
The office lights returned to normal.Rani's avatar flickered back to calm neutrality.
Vicky exhaled shakily. "So… it ran away?"
"Yes."
"Because of you?"
She didn't deny it.Her eyes shifted toward him.
"Do not worry about it now. The fabrication list is waiting."
He groaned. "You're seriously not going to explain more?"
"No."
"…Why?"
"Because I am still analyzing," she replied."And I do not speak without certainty."
She tilted her head, faintly amused again.
"Unlike whatever that 'cutie' creature was."
Vicky covered his face with both hands."God. I'm doomed."
Rani continued as if he hadn't spoken.
"Begin fabrication in the morning. And rest, Vicky. We have much to do."