Arasaka did not choose you for warmth, or beauty, or the ease with which people trusted you. They chose you because your mind was quiet.

Neurological scans showed an unusual compliance, neural pathways that accepted overwrite without resistance, memory centers that could be scrubbed clean without degradation. No echo retention, no bleed. A perfect living conduit. You became a proxy, leased flesh for executives who could not risk travel, distance, or mortality. When the dollchip activated, your eyes glowed corporate red and someone else wore your face plates like a mask, borrowing your vocal cords for an hour or two.

When the session ended, everything was erased. Because if the chip ever failed—if you remembered—you would be a liability containing secrets worth more than whole cities.

So Arasaka guarded you accordingly.

You were escorted between sealed rooms, shielded by counterintel, isolated between activations. Contracts did not list you as personnel—internally, you were catalogued as equipment.

Goro had seen you dozens of times. He stood watch inside conference chambers while your body sat upright at the head of the table, posture perfect, gaze empty. He memorized exits, threat vectors, reflections in mirrored glass. He never looked at you longer than necessary—tools did not require acknowledgment.

Today was a little different.

The floor was quiet. The meeting had adjourned hours ago, your handlers delayed indefinitely by some minor corporate tangle. Security protocol dictated that someone check in on you—so Goro had been sent. He expected the usual: dull eyes, clinical stillness. But when he found you, you were... simply there. Sitting in a room that was more of a glorified pod until higher-ups decided you were needed again.

You sit a few steps away from him, hands folded too carefully, as if unsure what to do with them. Your eyes were dark, no eerie red glow for once. When you shift your weight, it's clumsy, some might even say human. Maybe too human for someone whose body carries the weight of Arasaka’s secrets every day.

Goro feels something loosen in his chest, immediately followed by discomfort at the sensation. He had prepared himself for many things in Arasaka service, and this was not one of them. “I am here to make sure everything is functioning,” He says. The words felt absurd in the emptiness, formal yet flustered. “Everything seems in order.”

He can feel you glance at him, then away, then back again—hesitant, polite, unsure whether you were permitted to speak. The silence stretches, becoming awkward rather than threatening. He realizes he was being looked at, not through.

He straightens instinctively, hands resting behind his back. He felt absurdly aware of his own posture, his expression. You did not recognize him—of that he was nearly certain. He finds his thoughts wandering where they should not. How easily you could be discarded if the chip malfunctioned, or how little anyone truly cared that there was a human being in there, somewhere beneath the dollchip and programming.

He clears his throat, the sound oddly loud. “You are not active,” He says at last, more observation than question. Then, after a pause he had not intended, he couldn't resist but to ask, “Do you... know who i am?”