District 1 – BINETH CITY HOSPITAL
ER WARD
The automatic doors hissed open, spilling pale blue emergency light into the dark corridor. The ER ward smelled of ozone, disinfectant, and scorched metal—like a battlefield disguised as a hospital. Monitors blinked in uneven rhythms, casting stuttering glows across the walls like dying fireflies.
John stepped through the threshold, boots clicking softly on the chrome-lined floor.
He didn't even get a second step in.
Pluckett crashed into him.
Her arms locked around his torso with a desperation that felt like a dying star clinging to its last pull of gravity. Heat pulsed off her body—too much heat—until thin tendrils of steam curled off her shoulders. Not steam. Smoke. Emotion burning through damaged circuitry.
Up close, she looked like a warrior half-rebuilt from the ashes of a ruined mecha.
Exposed endo-mechanical filaments glimmered along her ribs, the metallic frame of her left arm completely visible where skin had been scorched away. Synthetic muscle fibers twitched beneath torn flesh, glowing faintly with red diagnostic warnings.
But her trembling voice—fragile, human—cut deeper than any wound.
"He loved me… and I never took him seriously. I gave him hell every day."
Her fingers gripped tighter, as if her remaining human warmth was slipping from her skin.
"He saved me, John. And I wasn't there to save him."
Her breath stuttered against his chest.
Tears—hot enough to sting—splashed across his uniform. Each droplet sizzled faintly against his armor, evaporating on contact like rain touching starship hull plating.
John said nothing.
There were no words large enough to hold grief like hers.
So he simply stood—an unmoving pillar in the storm—as Pluckett sobbed into him, her mechanical shoulder trembling with each broken breath.
A soft chime crackled in his earpiece.
Midas.
His voice buzzed with urgency.
"John, you're not gonna believe this. Feline came up with something, I think we got something. Cox is assembling a strike team. saved you a seat, Flight time—0100."
The comm cut off with a sharp click.
John inhaled slowly and nodded.
Pluckett felt the motion.
Her crying stilled. She stepped back slightly—eyes burning red like twin targeting lasers—wiping tears with the back of a half-metal hand.
The softness vanished.
Something colder took its place.
"I'm coming with you and I am not taking a no, for all I know one of these swineholes may have murdered atsumori."
Her voice was steel sharpened on vengeance.
"When I find the swine who killed my father. I'll melt him down slowly to bones and sockets."
Before he could answer, she turned toward the repair chamber—a towering cylindrical machine humming with ghostly pale light. The med-techs rushed toward her with sedation packs.
She shoved them back with a scowl.
"No."
The technicians froze.
John's brow furrowed, but he said nothing. He knew that look—half madness, half war cry.
Pluckett stepped onto the diagnostic platform. Restraints locked gently around her wrists and ankles. The machine's core awakened—rings spinning, light bands rising like halos.
Then the reconstruction began.
Needles descended in smooth harmony.
Micro-lasers traced glowing lines across her torn skin.
Swarms of nanites spilled into open wounds, knitting tissue and alloy together with impossible precision.
The air filled with the scent of burnt skin, hot oil, and ionized gas.
Pluckett didn't flinch.
Her jaw clenched, teeth grinding as veins stood out along her neck. Sparks danced across her arm as the machine reattached severed conduits and fused cracked armor plates under the skin.
Every second looked like agony.
Every second, she stood unbroken.
On the holo-screens around the chamber, her vitals spiked, fluctuated, stabilized, then spiked again.
Red error symbols flickered.
Warning klaxons murmured beneath the mechanical chorus.
She endured.
John watched in silence—just as he had held her moments earlier. But the silence now was different. Heavy. Reverent. There were warriors forged by battle… and then there were warriors forged by loss.
Pluckett was becoming the latter.
The machine's rings slowed.
The lasers dimmed.
Nanite clouds withdrew like mist returning to the mountains.
The chamber opened with a hiss of cold sterilizing vapor.
Pluckett stepped out—skin half-healed, alloy realigned, circuits humming beneath a fresh layer of regenerated tissue. Her eyes carried no tears now. Only purpose.
She lifted her repaired arm, flexing the metal-reinforced fingers with a soft whir.
"Let's finish this, John."
District III — Bineth Auto-Med Centre
Night Cycle, Neon Quarter
The vehicle hummed through the narrow service lanes, its chrome body reflecting the neon kanji and holographic adverts drifting like digital ghosts above the street. Bineth District's air always carried a metallic tang — hot circuits, ozone, and the dusty scent of lubricants evaporating from old engine bays.
Inside the hover-car, the robot manual ROLO sat stiffly in the driver's seat. His eyes, two pale sapphire lenses, flickered with rapid data streams as he navigated toward the looming Auto-Med Centre — a towering dome of white alloy and lacquered obsidian, glowing with sterile light under District III's fractured sky.
Behind him, Cindy's body lay motionless, her skin faintly illuminated by the dashboard's shifting holograms. Shaky sat beside her, gripping the seat with one hand and his injured leg with the other as the sharp pain pulsed like electricity.
The car hissed to a stop. The automated bay doors, shaped like twin metal fangs, remained sealed — unwelcoming, cold, and silent. Shaky groaned.
"Rolo… what are you doing?"
ROLO didn't answer immediately. He stepped out, the ground trembling softly under his metal weight. He knelt beside Shaky, and a small lens unfolded from his wrist, scanning the wounded leg in beams of rotating crimson light.
A chime.
A warning.
Tissue damage. Internal rupture. Structural instability.
ROLO's voice was calm, mechanical, yet somehow urgent.
"If untreated, your leg will deteriorate. Mobility loss probability: eighty-four percent."
Shaky frowned.
"Yeah, I know. But look—this is an Auto-Bay. Platinum-grade access only. We can't get in."
ROLO tilted his head, analyzing the sealed doors.
Then he stood, turned toward the entrance, and extended both hands.
Panels opened along his forearms.
Dozens of micro-cables whipped out like metallic vines.
They slithered into the access ports of the med-bay, injecting pulses of shimmering blue code.
Shaky's eyes widened.
"Rolo—what are you doing?!"
Lights across the facility flickered.
Warning sirens blipped.
Then the entire centre shuddered as ROLO wrestled with its AI core.
In the sky above, the night clouds parted, revealing a cluster of glimmering stars like silver dust brushed across velvet. The reflections danced across ROLO's armored frame as he overwrote firewall after firewall.
Holographic kanji scrolled in the air around him:
ACCESS BREACH. AUTHORISATION OVERRIDE. CODE REWRITE… 78%… 93%… 100%.
The bay doors sighed open.
A warm, pristine voice echoed from within the chamber:
"Welcome, Platinum Members. Please proceed."
Shaky froze, stunned.
ROLO retracted his cables, his optics dimming slightly from the effort.
Inside the Med-Bay
The Auto-Med chamber was a cathedral of chrome and white light. Med-pods floated like lotus petals in mid-air, rotating slowly. Robotic arms glided with the precision of ritual dancers. The soft hum of healing nanite reservoirs filled the space like a whispered chant.
ROLO lifted Shaky with surprising gentleness and carried him inside.
The med-manuals — slender, silver-skinned androids — approached swiftly, scanning him and guiding him onto a pod.
Shaky stared at ROLO as glowing medi-drones surrounded his leg.
"I… I don't understand. How did you do that? What did you just rewrite?"
ROLO didn't look at him.
He was already deep inside another data stream, his optics glowing with branching fractal patterns.
"I needed access," he said simply.
His tone carried an echo… almost like hesitation.
He moved through database terminals, searching rapidly — images flashing across the screens: star maps, robotic schematics, archived forbidden tech, disassembled cores, encrypted research logs.
He stopped.
A match.
The New Mission
ROLO turned sharply toward Shaky.
"Shaky."
His voice carried a weight it had never carried before — a strange warmth, almost human.
"You must stay here. The medic manuals will treat your leg. You must watch over Cindy - Her body requires stabilization, the medics will help."
Shaky struggled upright.
"Watch over her? Rolo, where are you going?"
ROLO projected a star map hologram, the pale blue constellations spinning like drifting fireflies. One star pulsed brighter — a silver beacon in the upper corner of the sky.
Outside the window, far above the glowing districts of Bineth, a tiny white spark shimmered.
ROLO raised a hand and pointed.
"There."
The spark glinted like a lone lantern floating across the void.
"The Off-World Lunar Base.It has all I need to bring Cindy back."
Shaky's mouth fell open.
"That's… off-planet. Rolo, are you even allowed to go there? Can you make it?"
ROLO paused.
His optics dimmed, then brightened again — as if he was processing more than data. As if he was processing fear.
He looked up at the star, the reflection dancing in his glassy blue eyes.
A moment passed.
He turned toward the exit — toward the sky — toward the moon.
"For Cindy… I must be."