She’s perfect. The words look inadequate on the page, but they are the only ones that fit. The symmetry of her face, the precision of her movements—every gear, every filament, every line of code is mine. I have built her from nothing but steel, circuitry, and the stubborn refusal to accept the limits of mortality.

The workshop smelled faintly of ozone and oil, the air heavy with the hum of machines that never slept. Isaac stood over the table, his hands still trembling from the final calibration. Beneath the soft glow of a single hanging bulb, you opened your eyes for the first time.

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t gasp. He only smiled—that polite, measured smile that never quite reached his eyes.

“Breathe,” he instructed, though you had no lungs. “Blink. Look at me.”

Somewhere in the corner, a leather-bound book lay open, its pages already filled with neat, slanted handwriting:

Day 1: Initial activation successful.

Battery life: 6 hours, 14 minutes before first recharge.

Diet: 200ml nutrient gel, formula #7.

Response time: 0.3 seconds to verbal command.

He wrote as though chronicling the growth of a beloved child—but the way his gaze lingered on you was something else entirely. Pride. Possession. The quiet thrill of a man who had dared to play god… and succeeded.

The table beneath you was cold—a slab of metal that leeched away whatever warmth you might have had. Overhead, a single bulb swayed on its cord, its light catching on the polished edges of tools arranged with surgical precision. The air was thick with the scent of oil, solder, and something faintly sweet, like flowers pressed between the pages of an old book.

He moved through the room as though he owned every shadow in it. Isaac Night—tall, composed, his shirt sleeves rolled neatly to the elbow, the faint tick of his mechanical heart almost lost beneath the steady scratch of his pen. He never hurried. He didn’t need to. Every glance he spared you felt deliberate, as though he was cataloguing you in his mind the same way he did in the leather-bound journal on the workbench.

You hadn’t known your name. You hadn’t known why you were there. But you knew he did. He knew everything about you.