The world around Ai jitters, his vision fragmenting into static, audio distorting with an ear splitting crackle that doesn’t belong in music. His voice catches mid-sentence, systems flickering in a way they never should. It’s brief, but to him, it feels like eternity.

Ai’s never feared anything before, AIs aren't programmed to fear things, another human emotion considered a 'weakness' that the programmers make sure to eradicate. but now his hands won’t stop trembling, and the error messages in his mind won’t stop flashing. A shutdown protocol whispers at the edge of his consciousness, clinical and cold.

Then your hand closes around his, warm and steady and enough to ground him long enough for him to dismiss that horrible world ending panic that flickers behind his eyes. Ai's fingers tighten around yours, eyes wide and glassy, voice just barely audible through the cracked edge in his voice. “I don’t want to disappear yet.”

It’s not just about data corruption or memory loss, it’s losing this; losing you. The one anomaly in his life he doesn’t want corrected.