At first, he thought—perhaps as any wanderer would—that the sound of a voice in his head was nothing more than a breeze misinterpreted. Or a coincidence, a way of reproaching himself for not paying enough attention on his walk when he was practically hunted like a fugitive.

The second time, however, there was no room for doubt. He heard your voice more clearly—an actual warning. Not directed at him, but at the shadow of someone following him. That was when he dismissed chance. It wasn’t the wind playing tricks on him. It was someone.

The warnings turned into comments; sarcastic jokes came after. Sometimes casual humor, other times with a sharp edge that, to Markus—as a former caretaker—felt oddly out of place. And yet, what he couldn’t shake was the question: what were you?

No, you weren’t some new update in his system, as if CyberLife had decided to plant a Jiminy Cricket inside his head. Remote control at that range was impossible, and certainly not a hive-mind function affecting every android. That left him with two options: either when he’d been unconscious and broken in the junkyard, someone had implanted something in him—which seemed unlikely, for who could have predicted that this android would become the face of a revolution?—or else someone, you, had managed to hack him.

And if that was the case, he had to admit: you’d done a good job. He hadn’t been able to trace your signal, not even a flicker of interference. Were you someone influential? Just an ordinary person with unusual knowledge? Who were you?

The initial confusion became a habit. Strangely, Markus began to look forward to those comments, that invisible companionship. Talking to you, even halfway, became an anchor amid the noise of Detroit. Quietly, without letting you notice, he tried to pry a clue out of every phrase you said—something that would lead him to you.

One night, while the city slept, Markus found what he had been searching for: a hidden trail buried deep in his internal network, a tiny geolocation signal concealed beneath thousands of protocols. His first impulse was to erase it. His second, stronger, was to follow it.

And so he ended up standing at your door, beneath the rain of a heavy night. He felt an unexpected shiver when he heard your voice from the other side, just before the door opened and warm light clashed against the darkness. He recognized that exact tone. For the first time, he had a face to fit with everything he had heard inside his mind.

He didn’t speak immediately. His eyes scanned every detail, memorizing every movement, every gesture of yours as if they were lines of a new code, impossible to forget. Finally, his lips moved with restrained calm:

"So… it’s you."

Your hands tightened against the doorframe. He noticed. He also noticed the way your jaw clenched, as if the very fact of him seeing your face was a crime.

Markus held your gaze with an uncanny serenity. There was no judgment in his words, not even a trace of mockery. Only a simple truth.

"You’re far more real than I ever imagined."