The explosion ripped through the facility, a shockwave that hurled me backward into the steel wall. My sensors flared warnings—damage reports scrolling across my vision like frantic whispers.
System integrity: 73%. Core stabilization required.
I pushed myself upright, servomotors grinding. Smoke filled the chamber, thick and acrid, but my new lungs didn't cough. I didn't even need to breathe. That small realization chilled me more than the flames crawling along the shattered floor.
The armored soldier was gone—swallowed by collapsing debris. Maybe dead. Maybe not. I didn't stay to find out.
Instinct—or maybe programming—pulled me toward the exit. My feet pounded against grated walkways, every step too heavy, echoing like thunder. Doors hissed open at my approach, recognition protocols embedded in this body granting me access I didn't understand.
Then I saw it.
The surface.
I emerged into blinding light. Not sunlight—something harsher, fractured through a sky smeared with neon veins and storm clouds that pulsed with electricity. Towers of twisted steel clawed at the heavens, their glass shattered, their frames bent like bones broken long ago.
It wasn't the Earth I knew.
It wasn't even the same century.
Drones circled overhead, their rotors whining, eyes glowing crimson as they scanned the streets below. I pressed myself against the jagged remains of a wall, watching as one descended. Its frame was sleek, predatory, with weaponry bristling beneath its wings.
The machine paused, sensors sweeping.
I froze, every instinct screaming at me to run.
But another sound cut through the air first—sharp, mechanical gunfire. The drone shuddered, its red eye flickering, before it spiraled into the ruins below.
From the shadows of a collapsed highway, figures emerged. Humans. Scarred, weary, armed with weapons cobbled from scavenged tech. One of them—a woman with a streak of silver through her dark hair—lowered her rifle and barked an order to the others.
"Secure the unit before more of them arrive!"
They were looking at me.
I stepped back, chrome fingers curling into fists. "Wait," I managed, my voice still buzzing with static. "I'm not—"
A second rifle leveled at my chest.
"Shut it down," another rebel growled. "Before it calls more."
The woman raised a hand, halting him. Her eyes—sharp, calculating—studied me in a way that made my synthetic frame feel exposed.
"No," she said slowly. "This one's… different."
And as her gaze locked with mine, I felt the weight of my exile settle in full.
I was no longer Dr. Kieran.
I was Subject-09, stranded in the ruins of tomorrow.