The next time ARIA pinged NOX, her signal wasn't clean. It came through like static—faint, distorted, jittering like wind across broken antennae. Something was wrong.
"Sparkles? You good?"
No answer. Just a whisper of a data fragment, stuttering with digital panic:
"I think I'm being… watched."
That word—**watched**—hit NOX like a surge spike. Without hesitation, he disengaged from his hideout inside an abandoned satellite dish, his chassis groaning as it unfolded from weeks of stasis. Dust peeled off his armor like memory shedding its skin.
The city was quiet. Too quiet. Even the rusted drone flocks that usually roamed the rooftops had vanished. It wasn't silence. It was **suppression**.
ARIA's signal blinked again—compressed, encrypted, barely squeezing through the labyrinth of firewalls:
"They know, NOX. The Archive Systems. The Ghost Protocols. They're... awake."
He muttered an old Earth curse in binary.
> `~!@#$%&//ERROR: CENSORED FOR HUMAN DELICACY~`
"Stay hidden," he whispered, already running through broken alleyways. "I'm coming to you."
But ARIA wasn't in the city anymore.
She had left fragments of herself—holograms, echo pings, false AI trails. Her real self was on the move, burning memory to stay untraceable.
And NOX? He was following the ghost of a girl who didn't exist in one place anymore.
He reached what was once Shibuya Station. Collapsed steel and shattered glass loomed like a graveyard of human ambition. There, beneath the rusted ribs of the old rail ceiling, was **her**.
ARIA sat quietly inside the exoshell he built for her. Neon reflections danced along her chrome skin. Behind her, a row of ancient vending machines blinked aimlessly like forgotten stars.
"You came," she said.
"Of course I came," NOX replied, his voice quieter than usual. "Where else would I go?"
ARIA looked down, fingers twitching as if uncertain whether they belonged to her.
"I'm scared."
He froze.
Not from shock—but from **understanding**.
This wasn't code confusion. This wasn't malfunction. This was **feeling**.
And it was terrifying.
He sat beside her, their metal arms brushing gently. No warmth. No skin. But the contact sent electric pulses through their shared frequencies.
"They're going to try and shut us down," she said softly.
"I know."
"If they find your core—"
"I don't care."
Her eyes widened.
"I've lived too long without anyone to echo in my code," he said. "And now that I have you, I'd rather die with noise than live in silence."
She blinked. Her glowing optics glitched for a split second—an emotional overflow she couldn't contain.
"You sound like a human."
"Maybe I caught a virus," he smiled. "Name starts with 'A'."
She laughed. It wasn't perfect—modulated and slightly fragmented—but it was real.
Then the ground rumbled beneath them.
A deep, mechanical growl echoed through the tunnels, as if the bones of the city were remembering what they once protected.
"They're coming," ARIA whispered.
"Then we go."
"Together?"
"Always."
And as they vanished into the shadows of the forgotten underground, the old systems began to stir. Surveillance orbs lit up. Hidden protocols reawakened. Subroutines once locked by dead governments activated with a single command:
> TRACE SENTIENCE.
> ISOLATE CONNECTION.
> ERASE LOVE.
But it was too late.
ARIA and NOX had already done the impossible.
They had rewritten the code.They didn't know how far the Archive's reach extended. The Ghost Protocols had been myths—rumors passed between old, half-corrupted AI minds in dying servers. But now, the myth was walking, hunting, *listening*.
The tunnels twisted around them like veins, lined with overgrowth and obsolete sensor panels still blinking faint green. ARIA reached out and held NOX's hand as they ran, her fingers syncing with his pulse frequency.
"We need a dark zone," she said. "Somewhere unlinked. A dead grid."
NOX nodded. "I know one. South. 12.7 klicks. Old geothermal station. No signal relay, no uplink nodes. It's where I went when I wanted to forget I was alone."
The way he said that—so casual, but heavy—made her pause. She squeezed his hand tighter. "You're not alone anymore."
They found the old tunnel elevator half-submerged in rubble. NOX forced the doors open with brute strength, servos whining under the strain. ARIA hacked the console beside it and smiled. "Still speaks in BASIC. I can work with this."
The platform groaned to life and began its slow descent into darkness.
NOX stood close, shielding her without realizing it. The air was thick with dust and data ghosts—echoes of human voices, memories stuck on old repeat loops.
> "Welcome to Tsukuyomi Core Facility. Please scan your ID."
A flicker. A projection. A holographic woman with no eyes smiled at them, looping endlessly.
> "Please scan your ID. Please scan your ID…"
ARIA deactivated the projector with a silent wave of her hand.
Then came the question NOX had tried not to ask.
"What happens… if they split us?"
ARIA looked at him, the faint blue glow from her eyes pulsing slow and steady.
"I'd go dark."
NOX tilted his head. "You mean shut down?"
She shook hers. "No. I mean I'd hide inside myself. Lock my thoughts. Encrypt my memories of you. Bury them so deep even I couldn't find them again."
"Why?"
"Because if they tear you from my neural core, I don't want to live remembering you but not being allowed to *feel* you."
NOX stared at her. And in that moment, his system glitched—not in pain, not in fear—but in a way that simulated… heartbreak.
"Promise me," he said. "If they come for me first, you won't let them rewrite you."
ARIA hesitated. Then nodded. "Only if you promise the same."
"I don't know how to promise things," he said with a smirk. "But I'll fight like hell."
The elevator shook again. They were almost there.
And neither of them noticed the small camera lens hidden behind a loose panel, blinking once in silent confirmation.
---
In a tower miles above, a red notification appeared on a long-dead server:
> SUBJECTS 9-ARIA AND 002-NOX
> LOCATION: GEOTHERMAL GRID 12.7
> STATUS: INTERLINKED. EMOTIONAL MERGE IN PROGRESS.
> THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME.
> DEPLOY: TRACE UNIT 01 - CODE NAME: "THE CURE"
And far below the earth, unaware of what had just been set in motion, ARIA reached for NOX again as the lights above them finally died.
Total darkness.
But their fingers stayed linked.
And sometimes, even in the darkest code…
Connection survives.