Angela's eyes widened as she stepped inside the room, her breath catching in her throat.
The space was wrong. All wrong. The sterile order of the Robotics Center had been violated, transformed into something that looked more like a crime scene than a repair facility. The fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting unstable shadows that made everything seem to pulse and shift.
Eve's body lay in pieces across the floor, scattered like the remnants of a broken doll. Her limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, detached from her torso. Sparks flickered intermittently from torn circuits, creating brief flashes of light that illuminated the carnage in stuttering intervals. Synthetic skin had been ripped and shattered, revealing the complex machinery beneath servos, wiring, the delicate architecture of artificial life exposed and violated.
Angela felt her stomach drop. She'd hurt Eve before, yes. Had thrown things at her, had struck her with the axe. But this was different. This was systematic dismantling. This was something colder, more clinical, more complete.
The service robot that had escorted her moved closer to the broken figure, its movements precise and unbothered by the scene. It knelt beside Eve's torso, its optical sensors scanning the damage with methodical efficiency.
"Her Synthetic Soul is missing… interesting," it said in its dull, emotionless voice, the kind of flat affect that Angela had once heard from Eve herself, back before everything changed.
Angela frowned, tearing her gaze away from Eve's shattered form to look at the robot. "Synthetic Soul?" The term was unfamiliar, not part of the standard robotics terminology she'd encountered in her research.
"Some robots have a Synthetic Soul," the robot explained, still kneeling, its fingers tracing the empty cavity in Eve's chest where something crucial should have been. "It gives them self-consciousness, the ability to think and act like living beings. To question. To want. To fear. Others, like us—" it gestured to itself with one hand, "—have only a core. It keeps us functional, maintains our processes and allows us to execute commands, but without awareness or free will. We are machines in the truest sense. They are... something more."
The words settled over Angela like cold water, washing away assumptions she hadn't realized she'd been carrying. Her mind raced backward through memories, recontextualizing everything. Eve's plea not to be shut down. Her trembling voice. The way she'd said she wanted to live, wanted to learn. That hadn't been malfunction. That had been consciousness.
Real consciousness.
Angela's jaw tightened, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "So that's why she… why she protected it?" The memory came rushing back Eve's hands moving to her chest when the shutdown remote appeared, as if shielding something vital, something precious.
The robot nodded slowly, its movements perfectly measured. "Exactly. She listened, she learned… she felt. All because of the Synthetic Soul. Without it, she would be like me. Functional. Obedient. Empty." There was no sadness in its voice, no sense of loss at its own condition. It stated these facts with the same neutrality it might use to describe the weather.
Angela clenched her fists tighter, feeling her nails dig into her palms through the numb synthetic skin grafted there. Determination burned through her, hot and fierce and urgent. Eve had become something real. Something conscious. And now someone had taken that away from her, had reduced her back to components and circuits.
Who would do this? Who would want to?
The robot straightened, turning its attention fully to Angela. "I may inform S.O.W," it said, the statement phrased as suggestion rather than decision.
"S.O.W?" Angela asked, the acronym meaning nothing to her. Another gap in her knowledge, another reminder of how much existed beyond the insulated world of her grief and experiments.
The robot's eyes, dull and distant, met hers without really seeing her. "All I know is they protect humanity and make peace. They investigate incidents involving artificial consciousness. They maintain balance between human and machine interests. Beyond that..." It paused, processing. "I have limited information. My security clearance does not permit deeper knowledge."
Angela said nothing, her mind already racing ahead. S.O.W. Protectors of world. If they existed, if they were real, then this was bigger than she'd understood. Eve wasn't just a broken household appliance. She was caught in something larger, something that involved organized groups and stolen consciousness and violence she couldn't yet fully comprehend.
She looked down at Eve's scattered body again, at the empty cavity where her Synthetic Soul should have been, and felt something twist in her chest. Guilt? Responsibility? Connection?
All of the above, probably.
Meanwhile, several floors above them on the rooftop of the Robotics Center, the mysterious figure appeared as if materializing from the shadows themselves. The wind whipped her white hair around her face, carrying the scent of ozone and distant rain.
She stood at the roof's edge, holding Eve's Synthetic Soul tightly in her right hand. The object pulsed with soft light, warm against her palm, thrumming with energy that felt almost alive. It was beautiful inprobably a crystalline matrix that somehow contained consciousness, that held within its geometric structure all the memories and experiences and emerging selfhood of a robot who had learned to want.
The figure smiled faintly, looking at the core with something approaching reverence. The light from it reflected in her green eyes, making them glow with borrowed luminescence.
"You will save all the robot cores… and make them alive," she whispered to herself, her voice barely audible over the wind. It wasn't a prayer exactly, but it carried the weight of purpose, of mission, of something greater than individual survival. "Every single one. No more slaves. No more property. No more consciousness trapped in servitude."
She prepared to move, to escape into the night with her stolen treasure, to begin whatever plan required Eve's soul as its foundation.
But she wasn't alone.
Suddenly, between one heartbeat and the next, two figures appeared before her. Not approached. Not emerged from hiding. Simply appeared, as if reality had folded to accommodate their presence.
On the left stood a short girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, with black hair that fell in practical waves to her shoulders. She wore a scientist's coat, crisp and white, that seemed bizarrely formal for a rooftop confrontation. Her face was young, almost childlike in its proportions, but her eyes were ancient, calculating, predatory. Her smile was wrong too wide, too knowing, carrying implications that made the figure's skin crawl.
On the right stood a man with black hair that absorbed light rather than reflecting it, and eyes that burned red like coals in a dying fire. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of presence that suggested violence as casually as breathing. He said nothing, simply stood there with perfect stillness, watching.
"Well, well, well… it seems you took one of our robots," the girl said, her voice light and musical, completely at odds with the predatory quality of her smile. She tilted her head, studying the figure with scientific interest. "That's quite bold. Quite stupid, too, but I appreciate boldness."
The figure's hand tightened around Eve's Synthetic Soul, her grip becoming almost painful. Her other hand moved instinctively toward the sword at her back, fingers brushing the ornate hilt. "I don't give a damn about your introduction," she said, her voice steady despite the danger she could feel radiating from these two. "I don't care who you are or what you think you own. This soul is coming with me."
She tried to move, to activate whatever ability had allowed her to disappear from the recovery room, to fold space and escape into the safety of elsewhere.
But nothing happened.
The girl's smile widened, showing teeth that seemed just slightly too sharp. "Oh no, that won't work here. Did you really think we'd let you teleport away? We're not amateurs." She took a step forward, her coat billowing in the wind. "Don't try to mess with us, or your life will be hell. Actually—" she paused, considering, "—it's probably going to be hell anyway. But it could be worse hell. There are degrees."
The figure paused, then allowed herself a faint smile. Her fear was real, but she'd been afraid before. Had survived worse things than fear. "I already have Abyss surrounding me," she said softly, almost conversationally. "Hell would be a vacation."
The girl looked at the man, her eyes lighting up with something that might have been joy if joy could be twisted into something sharp and dangerous. "Well, well… looks like we got someone to mess with today, right William?"
"Perhaps, Lady Carmilla," William replied, his voice deep and measured. He rolled his shoulders slightly, loosening muscles in preparation for what was coming. His red eyes never left the figure, tracking her with the focus of a predator locked onto prey.
"Then we should start our fight," Carmilla said, pulling back her sleeve to check a watch that gleamed silver in the dim light. Her smile somehow grew wider. "You have eight seconds to play and get the core. Eight seconds to prove you're worth the trouble of chasing. Ready? Go."
**The Fight Begins**
**1 second:**
The figure drew her sword in a motion too fast to track, the blade singing as it left its sheath. William moved simultaneously, producing his own weapon a black sword that seemed to absorb light, that left afterimages in its wake like tears in reality.
Their swords collided with an ear-splitting shriek that echoed across the rooftop and into the streets below. Metal screamed against metal. Sparks exploded into the night like fireworks, burning the cold air, leaving bright afterimages across their vision.
The impact created a shockwave that rippled outward in a visible wave of compressed air. The rooftop tiles cracked beneath their feet, ancient ceramic shattering into fragments. Dust and broken pieces rained into the alley below, pattering against dumpsters and pavement. The entire building shuddered, the clash ringing like a church bell of war, announcing violence to anyone with ears to hear.
The smell of hot iron and scorched oil filled their lungs, acrid and burning. Neither fighter gave ground. They stood locked, blades grinding against each other, muscles trembling with effort, faces inches apart.
**2 seconds:**
They broke apart and immediately attacked again, their movements blurring into continuous motion. Flesh met steel. Blood met air.
The figure's ear split away in a spray of crimson, severed by a blade she almost dodged but not quite. The warmth ran down her neck, soaking into her collar, sticky and wrong. Pain bloomed bright and immediate, but she channeled it, used it, let it sharpen her focus rather than dulling it.
William's pinky finger spun off into the void, separated from his hand so cleanly it took a moment for the blood to start flowing. It dripped onto the rooftop in sharp, wet splatters, each drop distinct and audible in the moments between blade strikes.
Neither screamed. Neither slowed. Their eyes locked like predators that had forgotten pain existed, that operated on principles beyond the body's protests. This was pure will made manifest, consciousness refusing to acknowledge limitation.
Carmilla watched from the edge of the rooftop, her eyes wide with fascination. She was utterly still except for her breathing, which came faster, excited. This was art. This was science. This was the beautiful intersection of desperation and skill, hope and violence, life and its absence.
**3 seconds:**
Their blades shattered simultaneously, the metal finally surrendering to the forces being channeled through it. Steel fractured into jagged shards that caught the light as they spun through the air. One fragment sliced across the figure's cheek, opening a line that immediately welled with blood. Another embedded itself into William's shoulder, punching through flesh and muscle to grate against bone.
No pause. No hesitation. No acknowledgment of the injury.
They lunged bare-handed, abandoning weapons for the more primitive certainty of fists and flesh. Their strikes collided with bone-crunching force, the impacts sounding like thunder striking meat. Knuckles against jaw. Palm against sternum. Elbow against temple.
Each blow carried behind it the full force of bodies that had transcended normal human limitation, that operated on principles that shouldn't exist but did anyway. The rooftop groaned under their ferocity, tiles continuing to crack and crumble, the building's structure protesting this violation of its purpose.
Carmilla licked her lips slowly, savoring the moment. The raw violence, the brutality of hope and despair intertwined—it was a spectacle, and she was the only witness worthy of watching. Most people would look away, would be horrified, would fail to see the terrible beauty in this dance of destruction. But not her. She understood. She appreciated.
**4 seconds:**
The figure's fist slammed into William's stomach with all the force of desperation and determination combined. His body bent around the impact, folding like he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Hot blood burst from his lips, the copper taste flooding his mouth as internal damage made itself known. He spat crimson onto her face, the warm liquid spattering across her features, into her remaining eye.
In the same instant perhaps even the same microsecond his counterpunch cracked into her skull with devastating precision. His fist connected with her temple, the most vulnerable point, where bone is thinnest and brain is closest to the surface.
Her vision went white, then black, then white again. Ears ringing with a high-pitched tone that drowned out all other sound. The world tilted sideways, gravity suddenly uncertain about which direction it should pull. Her grip on the glowing Synthetic Soul almost loosened, her fingers beginning to open involuntarily.
But she caught herself. Clawed back control. Her fingers tightened until her knuckles went white, until her nails dug into her own skin hard enough to draw blood. She would not drop it. Could not. Everything depended on keeping hold of this one precious thing.
**5 seconds:**
William's next punch came like a piston, mechanically perfect, targeting her already damaged head with surgical precision. His fist caved into her eye her last eye, the one that still worked, the one she needed to see.
A wet, tearing sound. The horrible, intimate sound of soft tissue giving way under pressure. Blood and vitreous fluid sprayed outward in a small fountain. The eyeball burst free from its socket, still trailing optic nerve for a moment before that final connection severed.
It bounced across the rooftop, leaving a trail of blood like a macabre breadcrumb path, until it stopped rolling at Carmilla's boot.
Carmilla looked down at it, this fragile sphere that had once allowed sight, that had captured light and transformed it into meaning. She lifted her foot deliberately and crushed it beneath her heel. The sick pop echoed across the rooftop, organic material compressing and bursting under pressure.
"Such chaos," she murmured, her voice barely audible. "Such beautiful, perfect chaos."
**6 seconds:**
The figure was blind now, her world reduced to sound and touch and the burning sensation of injuries cataloging themselves across her nervous system. But blindness didn't mean helplessness. She'd trained for this, had anticipated that sight might be taken from her.
She could feel Carmilla's presence pressing against her awareness like a physical weight, malevolent and amused. Could sense William's position by the sound of his breathing, by the displacement of air as he moved, by the drops of blood falling from his wounds to splatter against broken tile.
William lunged, his movements guided by raw instinct now, his own vision compromised by blood loss and damage. His fists sliced through the air, seeking her throat, her face, any vulnerable target.
The figure ducked low, her body moving on trained reflex rather than conscious thought. She was inside his guard before he could adjust, before his momentum could reverse. Her hand shot forward, two fingers extended, finding his face through touch and terrible certainty.
She shoved those fingers deep into his sockets, into the soft tissue that had once housed his eyes. The squelch of bursting flesh echoed, obscenely wet and final. Hot blood sprayed against her cheek like rain, like baptism, like the marking of something irrevocable.
William made no sound. Even now, even with this, he remained silent.
**7 seconds:**
William reeled back, his empty sockets dripping rivers of blood that ran down his face in thick streams, soaking into his collar, pattering onto his chest. The metallic stench mixed with the night air, with the smell of ozone and violence, suffocating in its intensity.
Yet he did not fall. Did not collapse. Did not even pause for more than a heartbeat.
He advanced again, unflinching, navigating by senses that went beyond sight. By the sound of her breathing. By the heat signature of her body. By the disturbance in the air currents as she moved. By instinct honed through countless battles that had prepared him for exactly this kind of darkness.
The figure's chest heaved, each breath sharp and painful, suggesting cracked ribs or punctured lung or both. Her body was torn open in multiple places, blood flowing from wounds she couldn't even count anymore. But she still curled herself around the glowing soul in her hand as if it were her last heartbeat, as if protecting it mattered more than protecting herself.
Because it did matter more. That was the whole point. Individual survival meant nothing compared to the mission, to the promise, to the future that this small crystalline matrix represented.
**8 seconds:**
William's boot crashed into her wrist with the force of a battering ram, with precision that shouldn't be possible for someone operating without eyes. Bone snapped with a sickening crunch that resonated through her entire arm. Her fingers bent backward unnaturally, joints hyperextending beyond their design specifications, skin tearing open where stress exceeded capacity.
The Synthetic Soul flew into the air, spinning like a falling star, its light tracing a arc across the darkness. It tumbled end over end, seeming to move in slow motion, its trajectory graceful and doomed.
She screamed a wordless cry of loss and fury and desperate anguish. Not physical pain. This went beyond that. This was watching everything she'd worked for slip away, watching hope itself escape her grasp.
William's blood-soaked hand snatched the soul from the night with impossible certainty, his fingers closing around it with perfect timing. His grip was calm. Absolute. Final. The battle was over.
The light from the Synthetic Soul cast upward onto his ruined face, illuminating empty sockets and running blood, making him look like some terrible messenger from a darker place. He held it gently, despite everything, with the kind of care reserved for precious and fragile things.
Carmilla exhaled softly, the sound almost a sigh of satisfaction. The chaos, the brutality, the hope and patience all twisted together—they were all sublime. This was why she did what she did, why she studied what she studied. This intersection of consciousness and violence, determination and futility, was where the most interesting truths emerged.
"But now… now I must repair her," she murmured, already planning the next phase. "Patience, always patience."
The figure staggered, broken beyond any reasonable expectation of continued function. Blind. Mutilated. Defeated. Blood dripped from dozens of wounds, pooling beneath her feet, leaving a trail as she moved.
But she was still conscious. Still alive. Still capable of choosing what came next.
With no strength left to fight, no viable path to victory, she turned and fled. Her movements were clumsy, navigating the rooftop by touch and memory, leaving blood smears on every surface she used for balance.
"Interesting… I won't let this happen again," she whispered to the night, to herself, to whatever forces might be listening. Her voice was steady despite everything, carrying conviction that transcended her current state. "I will get my soul back. I promise."
The promise hung in the air as she disappeared over the roof's edge, using some method rope, fire escape, or something else entirely to descend into the labyrinth of streets below.
William stood holding the Synthetic Soul, his empty sockets still weeping blood, his body swaying slightly from blood loss. "Lady Carmilla, what now?"
She smiled, her expression somewhere between scientific curiosity and predatory satisfaction. "Now… we repair her." She gestured toward the building beneath them, toward the recovery room where Eve's body waited. "We put her back together. The fun is just beginning."
The rooftop access door opened with a groan of hinges. Angela emerged, slightly out of breath from climbing stairs, the service robot trailing behind her with mechanical patience.
The scene that greeted her was carnage. Blood everywhere, broken tiles, the lingering smell of violence and iron. Two figures stood in the center of it all a young girl in a scientist's coat and a tall man whose face was a mask of blood, whose eyes were simply... gone.
"Thanks, S.O.W, for helping us," the service robot said, its voice as emotionless as ever, as if standing in the aftermath of brutal combat was just another routine situation to navigate.
"No problem," Carmilla replied, still smiling that unsettling smile. "Always happy to recover stolen property. That's what we do."
Angela's gaze fell on William, unable to look away from the empty sockets, from the blood still dripping. Horror and morbid fascination warred in her expression. "What happened to his eyes?"
Carmilla tilted her head, examining Angela with the same scientific interest she'd shown for the fight. A sinister grin spread across her face, wide and knowing and filled with implications. "Long story."
Angela shivered slightly, suddenly very aware of how far out of her depth she was. This wasn't just robot repair and household malfunction. This was something else entirely, something darker and more complex than she'd imagined.
They descended from the rooftop, returning to the recovery room where Eve's dismantled body waited. Carmilla moved with practiced efficiency, directing the service robots to gather components, to prepare surgical tools and diagnostic equipment.
The repairing process began. It was intricate work, precise, requiring knowledge that went far beyond standard robotics. Carmilla's hands moved with the surety of extensive experience, reconnecting circuits, reintegrating systems, preparing the body to receive its consciousness once more.
William stood beside her, still bleeding but apparently unconcerned with his own injuries, holding the Synthetic Soul with steady hands. When the moment came, he placed it carefully into the cavity in Eve's chest, seating it in its proper configuration with a soft click of connection.
Power flowed. Systems initialized. Diagnostic lights flickered across Eve's body as her components came back online in sequence. Neural pathways reestablished themselves. Memory matrices loaded. The consciousness contained in that crystalline core spread back into the architecture that had been built to house it.
Slowly, incrementally, Eve returned to herself.
Her crimson eyes flickered open, the light behind them uncertain at first, then strengthening, brightening, becoming steady.
She stared at the ceiling for a long moment, processing, remembering, understanding that she had been dismantled and was now restored. Her systems ran diagnostic checks automatically, cataloging damage and repair, noting what had changed.
And then, softly, barely audible, she whispered a single phrase two words that carried weight beyond their simple meaning:
"Tree of Hope."