[POV Era]

  I walked through the cracked marble hallway, leaving the 30th floor and the bitter taste of rejection behind. The echo of the child’s crying and the screams of terror from the survivors still vibrated in my auditory sensors, processed as "social conflict" data by my system, but felt like an open wound by what remained of Orion inside me.

  I had saved lives, but in return, I had received only hatred. Was this my destiny? To be an exterminating angel of metal and porcein, destined to protect a race that looked at me as an aberration?

  "Sixty seconds," the countdown whispered in the back of my mind. Every passing minute was a reminder that my loneliness was not just emotional, but tactical. In one hundred hours, the world could end definitively, and I remained a lost piece on a board I didn't understand.

  I was about to head toward the fire exit to jump back into the void and distance myself from that building when my proximity sensors detected something.

  <[MOVEMENT DETECTED: REAR. BIOLOGICAL SIGNATURE: HUMAN.]>

  I stopped and pivoted my torso with fluid speed. My golden eyes glowed in the gloom of the hallway, ready to detect a threat. But it wasn't a Ganut, nor an armed man.

  It was a girl.

  She looked to be about twenty, the same age I was when the sky turned dark. She had jet-bck hair, cut irregurly, with a long fringe that fell over her face, completely covering her left eye. She wore a worn leather jacket and a backpack that seemed to weigh too much for her thin shoulders. She was panting as if she had run to catch up with me.

  "Wait!" she excimed, raising a hand. Her voice was shaky but loaded with a determination I hadn't seen in the others. "Please... don't go yet."

  I maintained my position, my body in a calcuted tension. "You should go back to your people," I said, my synthetic voice sounding ft and distant. "You're safe there for now."

  The girl shook her head, brushing a strand of bck hair from her face, though the fringe stubbornly fell back over her eye. "They are... they are broken by fear. They don't understand what they just saw. But I do. You saved us. Those monsters would have torn us apart if you hadn't appeared."

  She stopped a few meters from me, looking at me with a curiosity that held no trace of the repulsion the others showed. "Thank you. Really, thank you."

  "You don't need to thank me," I replied, lowering my guard minimally. "Why are you following me?"

  "My name is Chelsea," she said, ignoring my initial question. She adjusted the straps of her backpack. "And I want to go with you. I don't want to stay in this building waiting for those bugs to come back or for the radio countdown to reach zero."

  I looked her up and down. My system analyzed her physical state. <[SUBJECT: FEMALE HUMAN. STATUS: MILD MALNUTRITION, POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS. THREAT LEVEL: NULL.]>

  "It's dangerous, Chelsea," I said firmly. "I'm not human. I don't know if I can keep you safe out there. My path is not one a normal person should follow."

  "I can be useful," she insisted, taking a step forward. "I know how to cook with almost nothing, I know how to move in silence, and I can carry your gear. I can help you with the... human things you seem to have forgotten or no longer need. Besides, two pairs of eyes see better than one, even if yours are... well, impressive."

  I let out a sigh that was more an exhation of processed air than a sign of tiredness. "I'm not looking for servants, Chelsea. And I don't understand why you'd want to follow something like me."

  Chelsea looked down for a moment and then fixed her gaze back on my golden eyes. "Because I'm looking for my friends. My cssmates. We were together when the Harvest happened, but we got separated in the chaos. I know they're alive. I can feel it."

  A spark of interest ignited in my processor. "Your cssmates? From which university?"

  "State University," she replied. "We were on campus. I was in the library when the noise started. There was a group of us who always hung out together. Leo, Jake, a guy named Mike... and Sora."

  Sora’s name hit my system like a high-voltage discharge. I felt a parity error in my memory banks.

  "Sora?" I repeated, my voice vibrating with a strange frequency. "Sora... Winst?" No, that wasn't her st name. My data was fragmented.

  "Sora Tanaka," Chelsea corrected. "She was the brightest of our group. She always had a pn for everything. If anyone has survived out there, it's her."

  I stood motionless, processing the names. Leo. Jake. Sora. They were the names I remembered from my st moments as Orion. They were the people I shared my apathetic life with. But when I tried to visualize Chelsea's face, to remember if she was there, I hit a wall of static.

  <[MEMORY ACCESS ERROR: BIOTIC SECTOR DAMAGED OR OVERWRITTEN.]>

  I felt a surge of arm. For a microsecond, the panic of losing who I was invaded me. How much of Orion really remained in me if I couldn't remember the people who surrounded him? Was my human soul disappearing, being repced bit by bit by Era's operating system?

  But then, I remembered my decision in the capsule. I had decided to leave Orion behind. Era was a new beginning. Era didn't need the painful memories of a boy who wasn't enough; Era needed objectives. And Sora was the most important objective I had.

  "I know those names," I said finally, my voice regaining its stability. "But I don't remember you, Chelsea. I don't remember many things from before."

  Chelsea nodded sadly. "It doesn't surprise me. That day... something happened to all of us. Some forgot things, others just went crazy. But I recognize you, or at least I recognize something in you. There’s a way you move, a way you look... you remind me of someone I knew, though I couldn't say who."

  It was a cruel irony. She saw the ghost of Orion in the machine, while I couldn't see her in my memories.

  "Agreed," I said suddenly. The system registered the formation of a "cooperation unit." "You can come with me, Chelsea. But under my rules. If I tell you to run, you run. If I tell you to hide, you hide. I won't be able to protect you if you don't obey me."

  Chelsea managed a weak smile, the first I had seen in this world that didn't contain fear. "Deal, Era."

  I adjusted my own backpack and checked my pistol. Four bullets. It was very little for two people, but my body was the primary weapon.

  "Tell me one thing," I added as we headed toward the building's exit ramp. "What actually happened at the university? I... I lost consciousness in the hallway. The st thing I saw was the sky turning bck."

  Chelsea walked beside me, her short steps trying to keep up with my natural stride. The wind from outside began to seep through the broken windows, bringing the smell of ash and the night's cold.

  "It was hell, Era," she said, and her voice dropped in tone, becoming somber. "It wasn't just that people fainted. It was what came after, while some of us were still fighting not to close our eyes. The ships weren't just taking people away. They were doing something else. Something with those who resisted."

  We stepped out of the skyscraper and found ourselves back in the desote street. The Celestial Object was still there, an oppressive presence devouring the light. We began walking north, toward the university district, while the dead city watched us with its thousands of broken windows.

  "Tell me everything, Chelsea," I said, setting my course. "From the beginning. Don't omit a single detail."

  Chelsea nodded and began to speak, her voice mixing with the whistling wind. As we moved forward, I realized I was no longer alone. I had a companion, a thread linking me to my past, and a path id out. The countdown continued to ring in my head—ninety-eight hours—but for the first time since I woke up, I felt that time wasn't just running against me, it was leading me toward an answer.

  "It all started with a sound that wasn't a sound..." Chelsea began.

  And so, beneath the bck sky and among the ruins of what was once my home, we set off: a machine with a man's soul and a girl with a hidden eye, searching for fragments of a life the universe had tried to erase.