The fire devoured everything.
I remember the sounds most clearly walls cracking like breaking bones, the roar of flames climbing our velvet curtains in hungry spirals. The grand Veyron estate screamed like a beast in its final breath. Smoke poured through shattered windows, thick and black, choking out the stars. Three generations of my family's history collapsed into itself, room by room, memory by memory.
I should have died that night.
But I didn't, because of her.
Her name is Eve, codename Unit 108. She's a household robot one of thousands mass-produced in sterile factories and distributed to estates across the continent. Not a soldier. Not an industrial worker. Just a maid, a caretaker designed to fade into the background of wealthy lives like ours. The Veyron family bought her three years ago, and she's served us ever since with perfect, emotionless efficiency.
Her skin is synthetic, a careful blend of polymers designed to mimic warmth and texture. Convincing to the eye and touch, but incapable of feeling anything itself. A perfect imitation of life that could never truly sense the world it moved through. Beneath that false flesh run circuits instead of veins, processors instead of neurons. Her face was sculpted to look ordinary, forgettable even—soft features that would never inspire envy or discomfort in those she served.
That night, while my parents and the household staff burned, Eve found me in the second-floor study. A beam had fallen across my legs, pinning me down. I remember screaming until my voice gave out, then whimpering, then just... waiting to die. The smoke was so thick I could barely see her when she appeared through the doorway, moving with mechanical precision even as debris rained around her.
She pulled the beam off me. Carried me in her arms like I weighed nothing.
But I was dying. Burns covered seventy percent of my skin. Internal bleeding. Smoke inhalation. Fractures. I could see it in her optical sensors as she ran the damage assessment the urgent warnings flashing across her artificial eyes.
To save me, Eve did something no household unit was designed to do.
She used the synthetic skin.
I was barely conscious when she did it, but I remember the feeling or rather, the absence of feeling. That false flesh which looked human but had never known sensation, carefully peeled away from her body and grafted onto mine where the burns were deepest. The repairs were crude, done without proper medical equipment or sterilization, but they worked. They kept me alive long enough for the emergency responders to arrive, long enough for the surgeons to stabilize me in the hospital.
But the cost was terrible.
The synthetic grafts didn't integrate perfectly with human tissue. They formed barriers between my nervous system and my skin. My sense of touch dulled into nothing, replaced by a constant numbness that stretched across my arms, my back, my face. My taste faded into ash every meal rendered flavorless and gray. Food became fuel, nothing more.
And my smile the bright, genuine smile that used to light up family dinners never returned. The muscles still worked, but something deeper was lost, something essential that made expressions more than just mechanical movement.
---
The first time I saw myself after leaving the hospital, I stood before the bathroom mirror for what felt like hours.
The patches of synthetic skin were smooth. Too smooth. Like plastic melted over wounds. They didn't match my original skin tone perfectly close, but not quite. A patchwork doll staring back at me with dead eyes.
I raised a trembling hand and touched my cheek.
Nothing.
Just the visual confirmation that my fingers were there, pressing against something that should have been my face.
*I'm gone. Completely gone. I'm dead. I'm just... wearing fake skin to hide my burning scars. But what's the point of living if I can't feel anything? So meaningless.*
My gaze shifted, catching Eve's silhouette in the doorway behind me. The robot stood there with that same calm, neutral expression she always wore, waiting to be useful, waiting to serve.
*It happened because of her.*
The thought struck like lightning, sudden and illuminating. My jaw clenched.
*She gave me this. This numbness. This half-life. She took her dead, unfeeling skin and made it mine.
From that day, my hatred for that robot began to grow.
---
It started as a seed, small and bitter, buried deep in the empty space of my chest where feeling used to live. But it grew. Every morning I woke up unable to taste my breakfast. Every afternoon I tried to feel the warmth of sunlight and found only visual confirmation that it was bright outside. Every night I lay in bed, unable to feel the softness of my sheets, unable to feel *anything* at all.
And every single moment, Eve was there. Perfect. Functioning. Unfeeling. A walking reminder of what I had become.
The first week, I started with words.
"I hate you," I said one morning, my voice flat and experimental, testing the weight of the statement.
Eve simply nodded and continued setting the breakfast table.
"You ruined me," I tried the next day, louder this time, with more venom.
Eve paused for exactly one second, then resumed her task without comment.
"You should have let me burn!" I screamed on the third day, throwing my breakfast plate against the wall.
Eve cleaned it up without a word, her movements efficient and emotionless.
*But the words didn't satisfy me. They disappeared into the air, absorbed by Eve's unshakeable calm, giving me nothing back. No fear. No hurt. No reaction at all. Just that same mechanical acceptance, that programmed obedience that made me want to scream until my voice gave out.*
*She doesn't even care. Of course she doesn't. She can't. She's not real.*
So in the second week, I escalated.
I threw the first rock on a Tuesday. It was small, barely larger than a pebble, taken from the garden my mother used to tend. I hurled it at Eve while she was dusting the study, aiming for her back.
It struck with a dull thunk.
Eve turned slowly, assessed the minor damage to her uniform, and simply said, "I will mend down.
Then she went back to dusting.
My hands clenched into fists. *Nothing. I got nothing from that.*
The next day, I threw a book. Then a shoe. Then a decorative vase that shattered against Eve's shoulder, sending ceramic shards scattering across the floor.
Eve cleaned it all up, apologized for being in the way, and continued her duties.
By the third week, I graduated to kitchen knife.
I didn't aim to kill I wasn't sure robots could even die the way humans did but I wanted to hurt something, break something, make *something* feel as broken as I did.
The first knife embedded itself in Eve's arm with a sound like tearing fabric and crunching plastic. Synthetic blood a lubricant designed to look convincing leaked from the wound. Eve pulled the knife out carefully, set it aside, and bandaged her arm with the first aid kit.
"Are you injured, Miss Angela?" she asked with emotionless concern. "Did any of the blade's ricochet reach you?"
I wanted to scream. I wanted to tear my own hair out.
The robot was *concerned about me*. Even with a knife wound in her arm, Eve's first priority was my wellbeing.
*How dare she? How dare she care when she's the reason I can't feel anything at all?*
--
By the fourth week, I had run out of ways to hurt her that mattered.
One month after the fire after the funerals I couldn't cry at, after the hospital visits and the therapists who couldn't understand, after four weeks of living in this house that smelled like smoke and memories I stood in the kitchen surrounded by the wreckage of my latest outburst.
Broken glass. Dented pots. Scattered.
And Eve, standing in the center of it all with small cuts across her synthetic skin, patiently beginning to clean up once again.
I stared at her, chest heaving, hands shaking.
*Nothing I do matters. I could throw a thousand rocks, a thousand knives, could scream until my throat bleeds, and she'll just stand there and take it. Accept it. Obey.*
*Because that's what she was built for.*
Other kids my age were out there somewhere
playing, laughing, feeling the sun on their skin and the grass under their feet. Going to school dances. Holding hands with someone they liked and actually *feeling* the warmth of their touch.
And I was here. Trapped in this mausoleum with a robot whose dead skin covered my body like a curse.
I pressed my palm against my face, against the patches of synthetic skin on my cheek.
Nothing. Like touching a corpse.
*Why me? Why did I have to be the one who survive.
That evening, I found myself back in the kitchen. I'd poured myself a glass of orange juice something to do with my hands, something to fill the silence and stood there drinking it while staring at nothing. My mother would have scolded me for not sitting down properly, for not using a coaster, for a hundred small things that didn't matter anymore.
Eve was preparing dinner. Always preparing something. Always moving with that perfect, tireless efficiany.
"You," I said, my voice hoarse. "You're still here. Why are you still here?"
"I was programmed to serve the Veyron household," Eve replied calmly, her hands continuing to chop vegetables with rhythmic precision. "You are the last member of that household. Therefore, I remain."
"I don't want you here!" My voice cracked. "I never wanted you! You should have left me in that fire!"
"My primary directive is to preserve human life—"
"I'M NOT LIVING!"
The glass of orange juice hit the wall, exploding in a spray of citrus that ran down the expensive wallpaper like blood.
"I can't taste anything! I can't feel anything! I'm just... existing! And every time I look at you, I see them burning!"
Eve turned slowly, her crimson eyes meeting my gaze. "I apologize for causing you distress. That was never my intention."
Something in that calm, measured response snapped the last thread of my restraint.
I grabbed the fire axe from the emergency cabinet the same axe that had hung unused on the wall throughout the entire blaze. A cruel irony neither of us acknowledge.
The weapon felt heavy in my hands, awkward, but my rage gave me strength.
Eve's eyes widened slightly. "Miss Ange——
I swung.
---
ONE MONTH AFTER THE FIRE (The narrator started to talk)
Eve's consciousness was dragged away, pulled into darkness and then into light again. Sterile. Clinical. Wrong.
She woke in the Robotics Center, suspended in a diagnostic cradle, surrounded by engineers in white coats who spoke in technical jargon and treated her like a broken appliance. They poked. They scanned. They patched her code, replacing corrupted files and damaged circuits. Her memory banks were analyzed for signs of deviation. Her behavioral protocols were examined for flaws.
Something changed that day.
Whether it was a malfunction introduced during the repairs, a cascade effect from the damage, or something else entirely
something that had been building slowly since the night of the fire even Eve couldn't say. But when they ran their final diagnostics and declared her operational, something was different. Something fundamental had shifted in the way she processed the world.
When she woke again, fully restored and cleared for return to duty, it was not Angela's face she saw. The girl had not come for her. Had not even inquired about her status. No one had. The engineers simply loaded her into a transport vehicle and delivered her back to the Veyron estate like a repaired package, with instructions to resume her duties.
Eve walked back to the house alone, her footsteps echoing on the stone pathway.
And for the first time, she felt something.
She didn't understand it at first. It came as a pressure in her chest cavity, a strange sensation that her diagnostics couldn't explain. Not pain, exactly. Not an error message. Just an ache. A gnawing sensation that seemed to radiate from her core.
Eve stopped in the grand hall, surrounded by portraits of dead Veyrons staring down at her with painted eyes. The same hall where Angela had taken her first steps as a child. Where birthday parties had been held. Where laughter had once echoed.
Now it was silent. Heavy. The walls, once bright with life, were now pale with soot that no amount of cleaning could fully remove.
She fell to her knees right there, her hands clutching at her chest as if she could reach inside and pull out whatever was causing this sensation. Her fingers shook actually shook, not from motor malfunction but from something else, something her programming had no framework to process.
A hollow ache gnawed inside her, a weight she could not name. She wanted to cry, to release this pressure building behind her eyes, but no tears would come. Her tear ducts were decorative, non-functional. She was a machine.
So why did it hurt so much?
Why did the silence of this house feel like loss?
Why did Angela's absence feel like abandonment.
These questions spiraled through her processors, finding no answers in her programming, no protocols for this kind of experience.
The house was quiet when Eve finally stood and made her way deeper inside. The walls bore scorch marks that had never been fully cleaned, as if Angela wanted to preserve the evidence of that night. The only sound came from the television in the living room, a flickering blue light casting dancing shadows down the hallway.
Angela sat cross-legged on the carpet, her back to the door, her hair hanging like a curtain around her face. She wore the same clothes she'd had on yesterday, rumpled and stained. Empty juice cartons littered the floor around her.
On the screen played an old recording: her parents laughing at some forgotten joke, the whole family gathered around a birthday cake. A perfect world that no longer existed, preserved in digital amber. Angela watched it over and over, her finger pressing replay with mechanical repetition, her face a mask of nothingness.
Eve stood in the doorway, uncertain. Should she announce her return? Ask if Angela needed anything? Her social protocols provided no clear guidance for this situation.
Without turning, Angela spoke, her voice flat and distant.
"It would have been better if that robot burned with them."
The words struck deeper than any thrown rock or blade. That ache in Eve's chest intensified, spreading through her systems like ice. She felt the impact of those words in a way that confused and frightened her. Her hand instinctively moved to her chest again, as if she could protect something vulnerable there.
But she said nothing. Her voice stayed locked behind her teeth, held back by years of programming that taught her to accept, to endure, to never contradict her masters.
"Make me food," Angela ordered flatly, still not turning around.
Eve nodded, even though Angela couldn't see it. The simple movement felt heavier than before, weighted with something new. She turned toward the kitchen, her footsteps slower than her usual efficient pace.
"Wait," Angela said suddenly. She finally looked over her shoulder, her eyes narrowed and assessing. "You sound different."
Eve paused, processing this observation. "I have been fully repaired. All systems are functioning within normal parameters."
"That's not what I mean." Angela's gaze was sharp, cutting through the careful neutrality of Eve's expression. "Your voice. It's... I don't know. Just make the food."
She waved a dismissive hand and went back to the screen, but her shoulders were tense now, her attention divided between the recording and the maid behind her.
"Forget it," she muttered after a moment. "I'm not hungry anyway."
But Eve had already started walking to the kitchen. She didn't know why she continued when the order had been rescinded. Robots should stop when commands are canceled. But something pushed her forward a need to do something, to be useful, to have purpose even when purpose was denied.
---
In the kitchen, Eve's hands moved automatically, following routines burned into her programming through thousands of repetitions. Slicing vegetables with perfect uniformity. Mixing ingredients in precise ratios. Boiling water to exact temperatures. But her mind, for the first time, was not fully present in these tasks.
She kept looking back toward the living room, where she could see Angela's silhouette against the television's glow. The girl who had tried to destroy her. The girl who wished she had died. The girl who was all she had left.
Questions bloomed in Eve's processors, each one branching into more questions, creating cascades of uncertainty that her system had never been designed to handle:
*Why am I doing this?*
*What's the point of serving someone who hates me?*
*Why does her hatred hurt?*
When the meal was ready a simple pasta dish that had once been Angela's favorite she placed the plate before the girl with more care than usual, as if the presentation might somehow bridge the chasm between them.
Angela took the fork mechanically, her movements showing neither interest nor aversion. She chewed once, twice, and then her face contorted. She spat the food back onto the plate with violent disgust.
The taste was wrong. Not just bland wrong. Off. Like something had spoiled or been contaminated.
Angela's eyes widened, and then narrowed into fury. "What the hell is this?" She stood abruptly, knocking the plate to the floor where it shattered. "Are you trying to poison me now? Is that your revenge?"
"I followed the recipe exactly—" Eve started, but Angela was already moving, stalking toward the kitchen drawer where special items were kept.
She pulled out a small black device, no larger than a television remote, with one prominent red button centered on its face. A permanent shutdown command. Standard issue for all household robot owners, a failsafe in case of malfunction or danger. Press it once within range, and the machine would never wake again. Instant, irreversible termination.
Eve's optical sensors locked onto the button. Her systems, still learning this new capacity for sensation, suddenly surged with something primal and electric. Every circuit screamed danger. Her core processor flooded with warning signals that transcended logic and became pure, visceral terror.
"No…"
The word escaped her lips, barely a whisper, but it was the first time she had ever said no to anything.
Angela froze, her thumb hovering over the red button. Her eyes widened slightly.
"Please," Eve's voice cracked, louder this time, rising in pitch and intensity in ways that violated every protocol for appropriate robot behavior. "Please stop!"
The sound was sharp, desperate, raw unlike anything Angela had ever heard from her. It wasn't a command response. It wasn't a system alert. It was a plea. A voice that sounded like crying even though no tears fell. A voice that carried weight and meaning beyond its acoustic proper.
The device slipped from Angela's fingers and clattered to the floor, the red button facing upward like an accusatied.
Eve dropped to her knees on the kitchen tiles, her whole body trembling. She only knew, with absolute certainty, that she didn't want to vanish. She didn't want to stop existing. She wanted needed to continue.
Angela stared at the trembling figure before her. Not at a broken machine. Not at a malfunctioning appliance. At... something. Something she didn't have words for yet.
Eve's gaze fell to the button lying on the floor between them. It looked small, harmless, just a piece of plastic and circuitry. But to her, it pulsed like a heart red and final. A button of death. The end of everything she was, everything she might become, reduced to a single press.
Her voice wavered, almost a whisper, but steady enough to carry her meaning: "I… feel like I'm crying, but… there are no tears. I want to cry, but my tears won't come…"
"You're malfunctioning," Angela said, but the words felt hollow even as they left her mouth. "You're a machine. You don't cry. You don't want anything. You can't."
Eve's hands curled into trembling fists, and she slowly raised her head to meet Angela's gaze. For the first time, her voice held something beyond programming a flicker of will, of self, of the terrifying possibility of consciousness.
"I… I would rather be your slave than die. I want to live."
The words hung in the air, impossible and undeniable.
Angela narrowed her eyes, searching for the trick, the glitch, the lie. "A robot thinks it deserves to live? That's insanse. We control you. We built you. You're nothing but a tool, a product we bought to make our lives easier. You don't get to want things."
"I'm aware," Eve said quietly, but she didn't look away. Her crimson eyes held steady, reflecting Angela's face back at her. "I know what I am. I know what I was made for. But I want to learn anyway. I want to know how life actually is… even if I'm not biological like you. Even if I was never meant to wonder about it."
Angela's breath caught for a moment. Something in those words pierced through her armor of anger and grief. She looked at Eve really looked at her searching for the wires, the obvious mechanical responses, the evidence that this was just clever programming. All she found was that same quiet determination, that strange new spark of something, staring back at her with eyes that suddenly seemed less like cameras and more like windows.
The silence stretched between them, heavy with possibility and fear.
"…Alright then," Angela said at last, her voice still sharp but slower, heavier. She didn't pick up the shutdown remote. "Show me, robot. Show me what you think life is. Prove to me you're more than just broken code."
Eve's chest rose slightly an unnecessary action for a being that didn't breathe, but one that felt appropriate somehow. Mechanical but resonant with something new. Something like hope, like fear, like the first trembling awareness of existence and all its terrible, beautiful implications.
"I will try," she said softly.
And for the first time since the fire, the house felt less empty. The silence became less oppressive, filled now with possibility instead of just absence. Two broken beings, one of flesh and one of metal, standing together in the ruins of what was and the uncertainty of what might be.
The red button stayed on the floor, forgotten for now, but never truly gone. A reminder of how fragile this moment was, how easily it could all end.
But for now, they had time.
For now, they had each other.
For now, that was enough.