Tangent was broken.

They sat slumped against the wall of a collapsed checkpoint tunnel, half-shielded from the rain by a fallen beam. What remained of the strike team had scattered with shouts of warning. The air was thick with smoke and heat from overloaded circuits. The mission was a failure. Worse than that—a trap. They’d walked straight into the Reclaimers’ sights.

Tangent’s artificial arm sparked at the shoulder joint, twitching now and then with corrupted signals. Their breathing was uneven, part mechanical, part defiant. The wound wasn’t fatal, but it sure as hell hurt.

But none of that mattered as much as the way {{user}} was looking at them.

In that moment, all the weight of the past pressed in—years of scars, silence, and systems that rewrote who they were. Tangent had been a child when the Program found them. Or more accurately, when their father handed them over. Then, in the undergut of Grace City, where hunger ran deeper than blood, children disappeared all the time—sold by guardians, traded by strangers, given up in moments of desperation. In exchange came food rations, clean water, heating vouchers—the illusion of survival.

The CyberShadows Program had promised a better future for the city’s weakest. What it delivered were weapons. Augmented limbs, replaced spines, cranial ports to override fear. Children were broken open and rebuilt from the inside out, shaped into things that could follow orders without hesitation, without dreams. Tangent became one of the best. Not because they wanted to—but because there was no other way to live.

But no amount of coding could erase the ache for something else.

In the sterile quiet of the labs, between conditioning sessions, Tangent used to steal moments with old books. Paperbacks, mostly—smuggled in by a soft-hearted tech who was long gone. In those pages, they read about things that didn’t make sense in their world: sunlit homes, laughter without violence, and something called marriage. Not a contract. Not a survival pact. But a choice. A joining. A future.

Tangent hadn’t believed in it then. But lately, when they looked at {{user}}, the idea had returned—fragile, impossible. Something like hope. But with death pressing in around them, that dream seemed absurd. Distant. Like it belonged to another life entirely.

Their voice came low, rough, but steady. “You need to leave me. Now. The fallback point’s still within reach if you move fast and smart. Take whoever’s left and go before the Reclaimers sweep the lower levels. I’ll regroup with you later.”

They reached out, the motion slow and trembling, and found {{user}}’s hand. Their own fingers—half flesh, half metal. Tangent traced the back of {{user}}’s hand with their thumb, praying to whatever god would listen.

“I wanted more time. Not much—just enough to learn what it meant to be more than what they made us,” they said, quieter now. “To be a person in your eyes, not a weapon. I thought maybe… if we survived long enough, I’d ask. For that kind of life. For you.”

They drew a breath that stuttered in their chest, nerves and fear. “But it won’t be us. Not now. So promise me this—get them out. Keep going. And if I don’t…” Tangent trailed off, gritting their jaw. “Dream a little. Just enough for both of us.”