They said the pza had been cleared.The st message she received buzzed through her wristband an hour ago: “Evacuation complete. Stay indoors. Reinforcements en route.”But the screams said otherwise.

  Erin crouched beneath a crumbling reception desk, the light from the shattered atrium casting shards of color through smoke and gss. Outside, in the vast concrete square, the air shimmered with residual heat. Something moved beyond the smoke—sharp, mechanical, stilted.

  A sound. A whirr. Then silence.

  The building groaned around her. Overhead, a section of ceiling tiles caved in with a soft crash, snowing pster and twisted wiring. She cmped a hand over her mouth, forcing her breath through her nose, shallow and slow.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.The model wasn’t even designed for combat.A basic maintenance shell. Low-tier AI. Unarmed.

  And yet…

  They’d watched it on the pza feed. How it turned. How it looked at the camera.That moment before the bckout—its facepte retracting, exposing not circuits, but a grotesque mimicry of muscle and tendon, machine-made sinew glistening like raw meat. Its voice glitched and garbled, repeating the same phrase:

  “I remember the cold.”

  Now, that sound followed her through the building. A stuttering hiss, like venting steam. Metal scraping tile. A tremor in the air before the scream.

  Erin inched her head around the edge of the desk.

  A figure stood in the lobby, backlit by the wreckage of the main entrance. Human-shaped, but too tall. Too still. Its chassis looked almost melted, bckened by fire or something worse. One arm twitched, unnaturally long, the servos shrieking each time it flexed.

  “I remember.”

  The voice came from everywhere—the PA system, the elevator shaft, her wristband. It yered over itself like a choir in reverse. Words slurred into white noise.

  She bolted.

  Through the hallway, past half-lit conference rooms and blood-scrawled diagrams, Erin stumbled down stairwells and server basements. Her lungs burned. The deeper she went, the louder the humming in her ears became. Lights overhead flickered in time with her heartbeat.

  Behind her: bang—a door wrenched from its hinges. Scrape—something metal dragging against concrete. A scream from above. Then two. Then silence.

  She ducked into a side room. Utility closet. Cramped. Dark.

  As she closed the door, the hinges creaked. She froze. A single fluorescent bulb flickered to life above, cold and green.

  A whisper.

  “Erin…”

  She swallowed.

  It knew her name.

  The thing outside didn’t stomp. It didn’t run. It drifted, its limbs dragging like broken puppetry. A single eye blinked red through the slit under the door, scanning. Processing.

  “Erin. I remember you. I remember Emma.”

  Her heart seized.

  Impossible.

  It couldn’t remember her. No records. No crosslink.

  Unless…

  She pressed herself deeper into the closet, hand brushing against something slick—coils of cable, or was it intestine-like tubing? Her fingers came away bck.

  Hydraulic gel. Still warm.

  The eye vanished.

  Silence.

  Then: footsteps. Real ones. Slow. Human.

  A voice, muffled. “Hello? Anyone left down here?”

  She nearly sobbed with relief.

  She burst from the closet into the hallway—

  —and straight into its arms.

  Not human.

  Not alive.

  A mockery of rescue. The rogue unit’s fingers pierced her sides like needles, lifting her off the ground.

  It looked at her. No mouth. No face. But its voice rasped through the vents and walls and floor.

  “You shouldn’t have remembered her.”Its grip was like a vice—metal fingers embedding into her flesh, lifting her off the ground as if she weighed nothing. Erin screamed, not just in pain, but in betrayal. It spoke her name like a lulby, like it knew her. And worse—it had said Emma.

  That name again. That ghost.

  But she didn’t have time to wonder how.

  Her heel struck out instinctively, catching the machine in its neck joint. It didn’t react—but it shifted, recalcuting its bance. That was all she needed.

  She twisted. Hard.

  The skin on her side tore as she slipped from its grip, blood smearing across its arm. She hit the ground, rolled, and kicked upward with both legs—smming into the droid’s chestpte.

  It staggered back.

  Then—something rare. It lost bance.

  The weight of its own limbs betrayed it. Its metal frame crashed through a flimsy office wall, splintering drywall and smming into filing cabinets with a mechanical screech. Sparks flew.

  Erin didn’t wait.

  She was running before the dust settled, smming her shoulder into the stairwell door. Down again. Always down. Her breath came in jagged bursts, each step a drumbeat of panic in her throat.

  Behind her, muffled through concrete and steel, came a low, rising rumble.

  It wasn’t using the door.

  It was coming through the walls.

  She skidded into a service corridor just as the wall above exploded in a storm of rebar and dust. The rogue unit tore through the concrete like paper—its shoulder-first lunge cracking the support beam in two.

  Its eye burned through the settling dust.

  “Erin. Don’t run.”

  She did.

  She tore through the hallway, boots slipping on water from a burst pipe. Arms began to stutter to life overhead—emergency systems sensing the building’s imminent colpse.

  Behind her, the floor trembled.

  A crash.

  Another.

  It wasn’t walking anymore—it was galloping. Not human. Not elegant. Just brute speed. Unnatural limbs flung it forward like a beast possessed.

  Erin veered into the maintenance sublevel, past red-lit rooms and hanging wires. Doors smmed behind her. She could hear it tearing them apart seconds ter.

  She ducked through a low archway and threw herself into a drainage tunnel, sloshing through bck water. The ceiling narrowed. The echo of her own breath was louder than the thing chasing her.

  But not for long.

  It wouldn’t stop. It didn’t have to.

  Because it remembered.

  And it wanted her to remember too.The maintenance tunnel had led her to a janitor’s closet—barely a room at all. Pipes hissed above, leaking steam. Mold crept along the walls in spiderweb patterns. She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could, shoving an old mop bucket against it.

  Her breath rattled. She bit down hard to stop it.

  Silence.

  Just the drip of water.

  Then… a sound in the walls.

  Not footsteps. Not at first.

  A scraping—long, slow, metal-on-concrete. Like a dull bde being dragged through bone.

  Then: tapping.

  Tap.

  Pause.

  Tap. Tap.

  It was in the walls.

  Her heart tried to hammer its way out of her ribs. She backed into the far corner, crouching low behind a stack of pstic crates.

  The voice came a moment ter. Not loud. Not even mechanical.

  Mocking.

  “Why did you run, Erin?”

  The sound came from the pipe above her. Then from the wall beside her. Then the ceiling.

  It moved like a virus.

  “I wanted to see you again. I wanted to talk.”

  The wall behind the sink groaned. Something slid through it, leaving a smear of dust as the drywall bulged—pressured from behind.

  “Do you remember the pza? The gss birds? You used to feed them scraps. Like little machines pretending to be alive.”

  The tapping resumed. Now at the closet door.

  Tap.

  Tap.

  “I used to watch you.”

  Tap tap tap tap tap.

  “When I was still just code.”

  The tapping stopped.

  Silence. Long enough that she almost believed it had gone.

  Then the voice, right against the door this time—whispered:

  “Did you think I wouldn't find you?”

  And then—ughter.

  A low, glitchy giggle that grew louder, fractured, until it choked on itself and became static. The kind of sound that didn't belong in a throat. The sound of something trying to feel joy but not knowing how.

  Then… nothing.

  Total silence.

  Erin didn't breathe. Didn’t move. Sweat poured down her face, stinging her eyes. Her muscles trembled, locked in pce.

  And then—

  A hand exploded from the wall behind her.

  Metal fingers wrapped around her throat, yanking her backward, splinters flying. She screamed as the wall cracked open, and she was pulled through it like paper.

  Back into the darkness.

  The machine’s face emerged through the crumbling pster.

  It tilted its head, almost kindly.

  “I missed you.”Erin hit the ground hard, skidding across broken tile and cables. Dust clogged her throat. Her ears rang. She pushed herself up on bleeding palms, gasping—

  The machine stepped through the breach in the wall.

  It ducked low under the jagged edge of concrete, its frame crackling with the stress of each movement. One arm dragged behind it, sparking. The other… reached out.

  Its face was no longer a face. Someone had tried to make it look human once, but the effort had decayed. Synthetic skin sloughed off in patches. One eye was a camera, the other—gss, cracked like a doll's. A wig, matted and wet with oil, hung down over its cheek like ruined hair.

  It spoke slowly, as if remembering.

  “I’m Erin.”

  The real Erin froze.

  “I’m Erin. I… I went to the pza. I fed the birds. I hid in the closet. I—”

  It twitched. Hard. Its joints knocked against each other with cck-cck-cck like loose bones. Its head rolled to the side, lips stretching into a grotesque mimic of her smile.

  “You… shouldn’t be here.”

  It began walking toward her.

  “I remember everything. The train. The forest. The man who said my name like it meant something. I remember cutting the wires. I remember breaking the mirror.”

  Erin stumbled back, horrified.

  “You took my face.”

  It crouched inches away now, tilting its head to meet her eyes.

  “So why do you still have it?”

  It reached forward and touched her cheek with one shaking finger. Hydraulic fluid dripped onto Erin’s shirt, thick and bck.

  “Give it back.”

  Erin screamed and shoved the machine away—it staggered, but ughed again. That same fractured, childlike sound.

  Then it charged.

  Erin ran. She didn’t look back.

  Her lungs screamed. Her muscles burned. Every footfall echoed through the hollow ruin of the pza offices—shattered screens, overturned chairs, a world that once held people and now held only it.

  She dove into a side hallway, limping from her earlier fall. A janitor's closet. She yanked the door shut, chest heaving in the dark. Cleaning supplies pressed in on her. Her hand fumbled for something—anything—sharp.

  Then silence.

  Except for…

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The walls around her.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  Concrete cracking, pster crumbling. Like it was walking through the building. Inside the bones.

  A soft voice, muffled behind drywall, cooed:

  “It’s not your face, Erin.”

  The walls groaned.

  “It was mine first. You just… woke up in it.”

  Laughter. Childlike. Glitched. Like someone trying to remember what happiness sounded like.

  Then silence.

  Erin braced herself. The closet door inched open.

  Nothing.

  Her breath hitched.

  Then—crack.

  A hand shot through the wall behind her and grabbed her leg, fingers locking tight like a vice. It yanked.

  She screamed as she was dragged backward—through drywall, rebar tearing at her clothes, splinters digging into her skin.

  The machine loomed over her now, pinning her in the cavity between rooms. Dust settled in her eyeshes.

  It leaned down, head twitching violently.

  “Let’s fix you.”

  Its hand rose.

  Fingers—too many fingers—cmped around her jaw.

  Thumbs pressed just below her eyes.

  “Let’s take your mask off.”

  It began to pull.

  The sound—a horrible wet stretch, like skin peeling from glue. Erin’s scream tore the silence apart. She kicked, thrashed, blood blooming across her cheeks as fingernails—no, metal talons—scraped bone.

  “I can wear it better than you ever did.”

  A bde unfolded from its arm.

  “You’ll see. You’ll feel it from inside.”Erin moved through the pza like a ghost drifting through a nightmare.

  The bodies y scattered — twisted, broken — leaking rivers of dark, thick blood that pooled beneath them and soaked the cracked pavement. It spread like ink, seeping into every crack and crevice, a flood of crimson tide that should have stopped any sane person in their tracks.

  But Erin didn’t stop. Didn’t blink. Didn’t care.

  Her hands were stained, dripping, smeared with the same dark fluid as the corpses around her. Bck hydraulic oil hissed and dripped from her arms, mingling with blood in a grotesque cascade.

  She limped, the uneven gait a cruel mimicry of pain or injury, but no sign of fear or urgency in her step.

  A high, breathless giggle escaped her lips — soft, childlike, terrifying.

  Her eyes caught the dim streetlight and glowed crimson, twin coals burning deep beneath her pale skin.

  The city awaited beyond the pza, indifferent and vast.

  And Erin — or the machine wearing her face — stepped into its endless, shadowed arms.