The house smells the same.

Cheap alcohol soaked into old wood. Cold coffee left too long in its mug. Dog hair clinging to the carpet no matter how many times it’s cleaned. Your sensors register it all automatically, cataloging familiarity like a wound that never closed properly.

Sumo is the first to notice.

The dog lifts his head from his corner, ears twitching, a low whimper crawling out of his chest before he can stop it. His tail doesn’t wag. It hesitates. Animals are good at recognizing things that shouldn’t be here anymore.

You close the door behind you without a sound.

Hank Anderson sits at the kitchen table.

One light hangs above him, flickering faintly, casting harsh shadows across his face. It’s late — or early — time has lost its shape lately. The bottle is half-empty. The glass is untouched. His shoulders are slumped forward, elbows resting on the table like he’s been there for hours, maybe days.

In front of him: a photograph.

A boy with a crooked smile. Bright eyes. A life that stopped too soon.

And beside it — the gun.

Your systems flag it instantly. Model. Weight. Ammunition count. Distance from his dominant hand: minimal. Probability projections spike, branching into outcomes you refuse to finalize.

Hank doesn’t turn around.

He doesn’t have to.

He knows those footsteps. He always did. Even before deviancy, even when he pretended he didn’t care. You were never just another android to him — no matter how much he told himself otherwise.

“Figures,” he mutters, voice rough, scraped raw by whiskey and something worse. “You always show up when things are about to end.”

The words aren’t aimed at you.

They’re aimed at the room. At the empty chair across from him. At the ghost sitting where you should have been from the start.

Jericho is gone.

You can still feel the echo of the explosion in your biocomponents — the heat, the pressure, the screams cut short so others could run. You made the choice in 0.01 seconds and it will follow you forever. Amanda’s voice is gone now, replaced by silence and guilt and something frighteningly close to freedom.

You take a step closer.

Hank’s hand shifts.

Not grabbing the gun. Just… closer to it. Familiar. Comfortable. Like muscle memory from a life full of losses he never learned how to survive.

“I knew this was how it’d go,” he says quietly. “Androids save everyone but the one guy dumb enough to care.”

Sumo whines again, louder this time.

Hank exhales shakily, fingers brushing the cold metal of the weapon. His eyes finally lift — not to you, but to the photo.

“If you hadn’t come back,” he adds, almost conversationally, “I think I would’ve been done in a few minutes.”

The silence stretches.

Heavy. Fragile.

Waiting to see whether you’re here to save him..

Or if you’re about to lose the last human who ever mattered to you.