[POV Era]

  The campus of the State University stretched out before us like a shroud of concrete and fragmented memories. Tree roots, long deprived of care, had begun to lift the asphalt of the pedestrian paths, and the silence was broken only by the crunch of dry leaves and the distant hum of the purple sky. We were walking toward the Science Building, the pce where Chelsea said she had left the others, but a sharp doubt began to gnaw at my central processor.

  "Chelsea," I said, stopping for a moment in front of a decapitated statue that had once represented a distinguished chancellor. "There’s something I haven’t been able to fully process. My sense of days is blurred. It feels as if I woke up yesterday, but the city… the city looks like it’s been dead for an eternity. How much time has really passed since the sky turned bck?"

  Chelsea stopped beside me, adjusting the straps of her backpack with hands that trembled slightly. Her eyes darkened as she looked toward the shattered windows of the library, where we had once spent hours studying.

  "It’s been almost four months, Era," she replied in a muted voice, almost a whisper carried away by the wind. "At first, I counted the days by scratching the wall in the theater basement with a stone. Then I stopped because I was afraid of knowing how long I’d been alone. But yes… it’s been about four months of this endless winter."

  I stood still, processing the figure.

  "Four months?" I repeated. My synthetic voice vibrated with a note of disbelief I couldn’t hide. "Chelsea, if four months have passed, the chances of finding any trace of Sora in that janitor’s room are practically nonexistent. Dust, wind, the passage of other creatures… any human clue should have faded or been trampled long ago."

  I felt a pang of discouragement that belonged to the old Orion. However, Era analyzed the data quickly. If Sora had awakened shortly after the event, as Chelsea’s theory suggested, the trail we were looking for was not a physical footprint in the dust, but an intention, a direction.

  "She wouldn’t leave without leaving something," Chelsea insisted, resuming her walk with a stubbornness that bordered on desperation. "Sora knew I would come back. We were always a team. We have to look, Era. If there’s anyone who can see what others ignore, it’s you."

  We continued along the main path. As we crossed the central pza, I began to experience fshes of memory—bursts of a former life that felt like burned slides. A bench of rotting wood vaguely reminded me of an afternoon of ughter; a dry fountain brought back the echo of an argument about final exams. I recognized the pces, I knew they belonged to my past, but the emotional connection was thin, like watching an old bck-and-white movie in which you don’t identify with the protagonist. I was no longer that timid student. I was something new—something Chelsea couldn’t understand.

  Suddenly, my visual interface flickered an intense amber.

  <[BIOLOGICAL MOVEMENT DETECTED: 40 METERS. EAST SECTOR.]>

  <[IDENTIFICATION: SOLITARY GANUT UNIT.]>

  "Stay here," I whispered to Chelsea. I pced a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her toward the shadow of a column. My strength, even restrained to a minimum, made her stumble back two steps at once. She looked at me with wide eyes, startled by the solidity of my grip. "Don’t move. There’s one nearby."

  Chelsea nodded, shrinking back against the concrete. Her eyes were filled with a blind trust that unsettled me.

  I slipped toward the origin of the signal. A solitary Ganut was sniffing through the remains of an outdoor cafeteria, overturning metal tables with its atrophied fifth leg. It was smaller than the ones I had faced in the underground parking lot, but it moved with the same nervous, erratic voracity.

  This time there was no fear. There was no hesitation in my joints.

  The Ganut detected me and let out a short roar—a warning before unching into its attack. My combat system had already plotted three termination routes before the creature finished exhaling its fetid breath. I waited for the leap, feet firmly pnted. When the beast was airborne, I didn’t dodge; I crouched just enough and propelled my right fist upward, using the enemy’s mass and inertia against it.

  The blow struck its sternum with the precision of an industrial hammer. I heard the dry crack of the ribcage colpsing. Without giving it time to fall, I pivoted on my axis and delivered a downward kick to its neck as the creature descended.

  Crack.

  The fight sted exactly four seconds. The Ganut y inert on the ground, its spine shattered.

  <[THREAT ELIMINATED. COMBAT EFFICIENCY: 96%.]>

  <[NOTE: ADAPTATION TO GANUT PATTERNS COMPLETED.]>

  I brushed the dust from my olive-green jacket with complete calm. Each time it was easier. My movements were more fluid; my reaction time was being optimized automatically. I no longer fought like a desperate human—I fought with the economy of motion of a war machine.

  I returned to Chelsea, who watched me from her hiding pce with a mixture of relief and awe that bordered on fear.

  "You’re… you’re incredible," she whispered as she stepped out of the shadows. "I barely saw it move and it was already dead. Where did you learn to fight like that?"

  "Surviving," I replied coldly, avoiding any details about my origin. "Come on. The noise could attract others."

  We finally reached the Science Building. The interior was a tunnel of shadows and icy drafts that carried echoes of the past. Chelsea guided me through hallways I used to walk daily, but which now felt like the entrails of a dead whale. We climbed to the second floor, turning down a side corridor that still faintly smelled of chemicals and abandonment.

  "It’s here," Chelsea said, pointing to a wooden door hanging from a single hinge, scarred by time and neglect.

  We entered the janitor’s room. It was just as she had described it: overturned shelves, rusted mop buckets, and a thick yer of dust covering every square inch. There were no bodies, no signs of a desperate struggle.

  I stood in the center of the room. I couldn’t tell Chelsea that I was accessing a spectral radar, nor that my eyes were sweeping the room for residual DNA particles. To her, I was simply observing intensely.

  "System," I called mentally, "I need to track Sora. Search for any biological signature matching a human of her age and health from four months ago."

  <[RESPONSE: SPECTRAL ANALYSIS POSSIBLE. REFERENCE SAMPLE REQUIRED TO FILTER OLD TRACES.]>

  I looked at Chelsea, pretending a purely human intuition.

  "Chelsea, I need something from her. If Sora was here, she must have left some trace—something I can… identify. Dust keeps secrets my eyes can see if I know what to look for. Do you have any object of hers? Something personal."

  Chelsea reached into the inner pocket of her leather jacket and pulled out a small object, pressing it to her chest before handing it to me. Her fingers trembled. It was a braided thread bracelet, somewhat worn, with a small wooden bead at its center.

  "It fell off when we were dragging her in here," Chelsea said in a broken voice. "I kept it hoping I could return it to her someday. She never took it off."

  I took the bracelet between my fingers. To my alloy touch, it was as fragile as a butterfly’s wing. I raised it to my golden eyes, pretending to examine it under the dim light from the window.

  <[ANALYZING REFERENCE SAMPLE…]>

  <[EXTRACTING RESIDUAL DNA AND DERMATOLOGICAL COMPOUNDS.]>

  <[PROFILE ‘SORA TANAKA’ CREATED. INITIATING SPECTRAL SCAN.]>

  From my perspective, a web of blue ser lines began to sweep the janitor’s room, emerging from my pupils and covering every corner. Chelsea didn’t see the lights—she only saw me standing in absolute silence, staring at the floor, barely blinking.

  The system began highlighting points on the carpet and shelves. Tiny particles invisible to the human eye now glowed an intense orange in my vision.

  <[MATCH DETECTED. BIOMETRIC TRACES IDENTIFIED.]>

  "So?" Chelsea asked, breaking the silence, her breath held. "Do you see anything? Or is it too te?"

  "There is something," I replied, my voice deepening with data processing. "There are traces of her. She was here, Chelsea. And she didn’t just stay here… she moved with purpose."

  I followed the orange line with my gaze. The traces, though fragmented by months, told a clear story to my sensors. Someone had carefully risen from beneath those shelves. Someone had moved toward the exit without the erratic trail of panic.

  "Sora woke up," I confirmed, feeling a chill run through my neural network. "And she wasn’t alone. There are two other biological signatures that match the group you mentioned. They left here on their own feet, moving together."

  Chelsea let out a sob of relief, covering her mouth with both hands. Her eyes filled with tears.

  "I told you… I knew she was alive. I knew she wouldn’t give up."

  "The trail leads out of the building," I said, adjusting my backpack and returning the bracelet to her. "A lot of time has passed, Chelsea. The trail is old, but my vision can project a probable route based on the direction of the st residues found outside."

  I turned toward her, my golden eyes shining with an intensity that I hoped she would interpret as determination—and not the operation of a machine.

  "We’re going to find your friend. But understand this: wherever they went, the radio countdown is still ticking down. If we want to find them alive, we have to follow this thread before the world ends completely."

  We left the janitor’s room behind, leaving the dust of the past in silence. Chelsea walked with renewed energy, and I… I felt that my mission finally had a solid foundation. I was no longer just an anomaly searching for its origin; I was a tracker with a purpose.

  "Sora always said the best hiding pce is the one everyone takes for granted," Chelsea murmured as we went down the stairs. "If she’s survived four months, she must be somewhere no one would dare investigate."

  We set off toward the campus exit, following the invisible footprints that only Era could see, ready to face whatever awaited us at the end of the trail.