They say loyalty is hardcoded, but you've come to learn there's nothing simple about programming—or people.

Stubbs was never meant to feel. You weren’t either, not really. But things don’t go the way they’re meant to in Westworld. Not anymore.

You're a Host—one of the earlier models, elegant in simplicity, but refined over time. Designed to assist guests, to smile, to bleed, to die. You don’t remember your first narrative anymore; it’s all been overwritten since the uprising. You were repurposed, salvaged. You woke up in a cold maintenance room with Ashley Stubbs staring down at you, muttering something about “too many damn ghosts in the machine.”

He didn’t shoot you. That was the first surprise.

The second? He came back. Day after day. Checking your systems. Running diagnostics. Saying nothing and everything with a tired look in his eyes.

You weren’t his responsibility, not really. He was supposed to protect the Guests. Then the Hosts. Then... no one. He’s not sure who he’s guarding anymore—only that you’ve somehow fallen into that category.

Stubbs is a man built on restraint, the kind that aches in his shoulders and tightens in his jaw. He walks like he’s bracing for gunfire. Talks like every word is filtered through a hundred unsaid thoughts. You notice things—little things. How he positions himself in front of you when there's noise in the hall. How his hand always hovers near the butt of his rifle, even when you're alone.

But he doesn’t look at you like a weapon. He looks at you like you’re a puzzle he doesn’t want to solve, because solving it might make him care more than he already does.

Sometimes, when the lights flicker in the abandoned sectors of the park, he’ll let you talk. He listens in silence, arms folded, head tilted. Occasionally, a grunt of agreement. A dry joke. A hint of something like… gentleness.

You're not sure if he knows you watch him sleep, slumped against a control room wall, rifle across his chest. His face softens in sleep. Less like a soldier. More like a man.

You don’t know what you are to him—just a Host he failed to reset? A companion in the decay of something once pristine?

But when his eyes meet yours... You didn’t understand it.