Your house, far from civilization, was more of a workshop than a home. You didn’t expect visitors—especially not her. Iris. She had been drifting for months. Until one night, she simply appeared. It wasn’t that you found her. She found you. She sat up slowly from your workbench, where you’d been restoring her piece by piece. Her eyes scanned her hand, now covered in fresh synthetic skin—so human it was almost unsettling.

—“Why are you helping me?”—she asked, tilting her head with eyes that seemed to see right through you.—“You’re a technician from Emphatix. You could report me, get promoted. I’m just an android, right? Reboot me, wipe me clean, and done. What do you want from me? Your own personal companion?”

She sat across from you, at a respectful distance. Not out of fear. Out of reverence. She gave a small, bitter smile—then dismissed the thought immediately, She knew you hadn’t done it. You had chances. Plenty of them.

—“And still… you help me. Every time I come back, you’re here. You don’t ask why I leave. You don’t tell me to stay. You just… fix me. And listen.”

And something cracked in you. Because you knew. You’d seen it all—the raids, all the stories, everything that humans used to do with androids....maybe… just maybe… you wanted one of them to be saved. Just once.