NANITE

He spoke for hours, his voice a calm, steady monotone as he recounted the brutal violence, desperate survival, and profound loss. He left nothing out. As he described the firefight that claimed Ray, Alyna choked back a sob, her knuckles white where she gripped the couch.

When he spoke of their father, Ralph, Selena pulled Max closer, the memories she didn't have piercing her heart like a dagger. Lina remained still, but bitter tears traced paths down her cheeks, a silent testament to a mother's grief.

Alyna's anger slowly dissolved, replaced by a deep, aching grief as she heard the final, desperate moments of the man she loved. Lina listened with a quiet, stoic sorrow, her hands clenched in her lap, absorbing the testament of her son's life and death. Selena and Max's fear turned to a stunned, horrified awe. This was the origin story of their protector, a tale of unimaginable pain and sacrifice.

By the end, the last rays of the setting sun cast long shadows across the room. The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken understanding. Their doubts had been replaced by a terrible, complex truth. This being had no obligation to any of them. He could have abandoned them at any moment. And yet, he stayed. Perhaps he, more than anyone, was devastated by Ray's departure, forever haunted by the ghost of the man he had replaced.

"Why?" Alyna's voice was barely a whisper. "Why are you doing all of this? Are you just… running on his memories? What do you see in us?"

Synth's silver eyes reflected the dying light from the window. "Ray's memories... they are a part of my logic now. But my choices are my own." He stood, his chair dissolving back into his form. "You are not a mission parameter. You are... someone I choose to protect. I see friends."

He walked to Alyna and held out his hand. A single, clean data shard rested in his porcelain palm.

"This has ten million credits on it."

The room froze. The number was an impossible, gravitational weight, silencing all thought.

"It should be more than enough to take care of everything you need," he said, his voice gentle.

Alyna took the shard, her hand trembling. Then Synth walked towards the door.

"I will come back with a cure," he said, his voice resonating with absolute certainty. "I promise."

He was about to step out when he heard a sudden rush of footsteps. Something slammed into his back, and a pair of arms wrapped tightly around his torso.

It was Selena.

For a long, silent moment, they stood there. He could hear a second set of steps, hesitant and unsteady. Max.

"Come back," Selena whispered into his strange, nanite coat, the words a fierce, desperate prayer. "Promise."

"I will come back," he said, his voice a low, steady hum "This body... is hard to break."

A soft, watery chuckle escaped her.

"Take care… Synth," Max said, his voice soft but clear.

The door hissed open. Synth glanced back at Alyna and Lina. Even they, in their silence, seemed to be offering a silent blessing. Lina lifted a frail hand and gave him a small, soft wave.

He waved back, then stepped into the hallway. The door closed behind him, sealing him out in the growing darkness. He pulled up his neck gaiter and hood, and walked away.

The car was already swallowed by a secure, subterranean parking lot. Synth had dismissed it, a tool no longer needed. In its place, the Kamigami waited, its matte-grey frame absorbing the streetlight like a patch of urban night. He settled onto the bike, and the electric motor engaged with a near-silent hum, pulling him into the late-night arteries of Virelia.

The city lights smeared past, neon bleeding into the polished chrome of the bike, but Synth saw none of it. His mind had already pulled a file from its archive. The name surfaced: Leon Voss. Dr Elara Vance. And the poison she had created: Nexus.

Nexus, the "immersion booster," a key to unlock a deeper virtual reality. A lie. In truth, it was a chain, a bespoke neuro-chemical agent that hijacked the brain, hardwiring euphoria to a product until the user was a slave to the sensation.

"Dr. Elara Vance… she created it," the phantom voice of Kaelen whispered in his memory—the data analyst with no backbone, the man whose fear had dragged them all to West Line that day. "She saw what it was doing… and she vanished."

He saw Leon's knuckles, white and tight around a wounded arm.

"She fled to the one place where even HVM wouldn't look for her," Kaelen had said, his voice a ragged, final plea. "The one place she knew she could disappear forever."

"Hell Garden," Leon growled. "The Green Scar."

The same destination, now programmed into the Kamigami's navigation. Synth would have dismissed it as a tragic but irrelevant variable. But the mission parameters had changed.

He reviewed the message that had arrived just minutes after he'd left Alyna's apartment. It was from 137, the unseen observer.

Leon Voss possesses files pertaining to Johnny Rivers. Dr. Vance could be instrumental in accessing these files, potentially delivering a significant blow to HVM.

"Why can't you retrieve the files for me?" he had asked as soon as he read the message.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"The data is kept on some data shards, and I don't have access to them. However, Leon has dug deep for that data. It could be useful," 137 had reasoned quickly.

Synth felt like there was something more behind those words, but he didn't push further. 137 seemed like someone who would never speak more than they had to.

His thoughts shifted to Johnny. He was a loose thread in the complex tapestry of his new existence. A debt he still owed to Ray. He had to tell him what happened, he had to close that painful, human loop. And now, that simple task was tangled in a web of corporate espionage and bio-chemical warfare. More problems, always more problems, waiting for his return.

His interface pinged, a soft, unobtrusive chime in his consciousness.

137: All set.

The message was a confirmation. 137's invisible eyes were now watching over Alyna, Lina, and the children. A guardian angel woven from surveillance code and paranoia. Leaving them in the care of a shadow was a tactical risk, a move born of desperation. But 137 knew too much, saw too much. He was a ghost, able to watch over them undetected. Synth had left his own countermeasures, of course, digital tripwires and sleeping daemons buried deep in the city and apartment's infrastructure. But he knew it was a fragile defense.

He leaned into a turn, the bike a silent grey arrow slicing through the night. The last of the city's towering sentinels fell away behind him, and the urban glow faded from the sky. He merged onto the main highway, a dark ribbon stretching into the vast, empty expanse of the wasteland.

Ahead, there was only the grey road and the cold, indifferent light of the moon.

He switched to demon mode. The silent electric hum died, replaced by the sudden, violent roar of a combustion engine. The Kamigami leaped forward, a bullet fired into the heart of the desert. The wind screamed past, a physical, scouring force, but inside, Synth was perfectly still as he rode toward Hell.

The door hissed shut. The sound of the magnetic lock engaging was a final, metallic punctuation mark on the impossible conversation. For a long moment, no one moved. The apartment was a vacuum, all the air sucked out by Synth's departure, leaving only a heavy, ringing silence filled with the ghosts of unspoken words.

Selena stood frozen in the middle of the room, her arms wrapped tightly around herself as if holding her own fracturing world together. Max was a small, silent shadow at her side.

Alyna had retreated to her room and placed the data shard on Nox, like a tiny, black tombstone.

She grabbed the old laptop that once belonged to Ray. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but she wasn't writing code, she couldn't. She was just staring at the meaningless, flickering data streams, seeing Ray's face in the cascading green characters. The anger that had sustained her for the past week had been scoured away by Synth's story, leaving only a hollow, cavernous ache.

Meanwhile, Lina, Max, and Selene were in the living room. A heavy, suffocating silence stretched between them until the soft whir of the wheelchair broke the spell. It was the only sound in the world, a deliberate, gentle intrusion into their shared stasis. Lina wheeled herself quietly across the room, her gaze soft as it fell upon the two children huddled together, two saplings in the path of a hurricane. She didn't speak, only gestured with a small, inviting wave of her hand toward the empty space on the couch beside her.

Selena didn't move at first, but Max slid off the couch and walked to her, his small hand resting on the arm of her wheelchair. Selena followed a moment later, a silent, watchful protector in her brother's wake.

Lina's gaze moved to Alyna's closed door. She wheeled herself over and knocked, the sound soft against the synth-wood. A moment later, the door slid open. Alyna stood in the doorway, her eyes unfocused, her posture rigid. She looked like a soldier still braced for an impact that had already passed.

"Are you hungry?" Lina asked, her voice a soft, quiet thing. "The children and I are going to eat."

"Sure," Alyna said, her own voice distant, her mind a maelstrom of corrupted data and fractured memories. "What do you want to order?" The question was an automatic response, the city-dweller's solution to everything: a simple, impersonal transaction.

Lina offered a small, sad smile, a silent acknowledgment of a pain she understood too well. She didn't answer, only turned and wheeled herself toward the small kitchenette.

They gathered in the cramped space, moving around each other with the awkward, hesitant choreography of strangers forced to share a lifeboat. The air was thick with unspoken grief.

"Max, can you open that cabinet for me, please?" Lina asked, her voice a gentle anchor in the quiet.

Max nodded and pulled the cabinet open. Inside were several brightly colored, vacuum-sealed packages of insta-noodles.

"Pick one for each of us," Lina said.

Alyna watched, her hand still clenched around the data shard, a part of her wanting to retreat back into the angry, logical solitude of her work. But then Lina looked at her, and in her gaze, there was no pity, only a quiet, shared understanding. Reluctantly, Alyna put the shard on the counter and began to arrange the cheap ceramic bowls.

The sounds of life, small and fragile, began to fill the silence. The crinkle of the plastic noodle packages. The soft hiss of the water heater kicking on. The gentle clatter of bowls being set on the small table. They were the normal sounds of a life that was no longer normal, a quiet ritual to ward off the ghosts.

They ate in near silence, the only sound the soft scrape of forks against cheap ceramic bowls. The food was tasteless, but it was something to do, a way to fill the echoing quiet.

Then, Selena looked across the small table at Lina, at the woman who wore Ray's eyes. "What was he like?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper. "Before… all this?"

Lina looked up, a flicker of surprise in her tired gaze. A sad, faint smile touched her lips. "Stubborn," she said, the word a fond, painful memory. "He was always so stubborn. Even as a little boy. Fiercely loyal. He'd get into scraps with kids twice his size if he thought they were picking on someone smaller."

Alyna made a choked sound, half-laugh, half-sob. She pressed the heel of her hand hard against her mouth, a desperate, physical attempt to stop the memory from escaping. "He never grew out of it," she mumbled into her palm, her gaze fixed on her bowl. "His taste in music was a crime against humanity, and he couldn't cook to save his life." A ghost of a memory surfaced, sharp and painful: the smell of scorched synth-flour, the blare of the smoke alarm, and Ray standing there in the haze, covered in white powder, grinning sheepishly. "Nearly burned the old apartment down once trying to make instant pancakes." The memory was laced with an affection so raw it was almost unbearable.

Selena and Max listened, absorbing the stories, the small, human details that painted a portrait of a man they had never truly known. They had only met the desperate survivor, the ghost fighting for his life, and then the being who came after.

"Our dad… he was like that too," Max said quietly into the stillness. "He used to tell us stories every night. Even when he was tired." He added another ghost to the room, connecting their loss to the women's.

Selena felt a tight, bitter knot form in her stomach. I wish I could remember, she thought, the words a silent, furious scream against the blank wall in her mind.

Lina's gaze, gentle and knowing, settled on her. She saw the flicker of pain in the girl's expression. "Selena," she asked, her voice soft, changing the subject. "Do you have a hobby? Something you love to do?"

"Yeah," Selena said, grateful for the lifeline. "I like tech. I wanna be a techie. Build things."

"And you, Max?"

"I wanna be an artist," he responded, his voice small but firm, with no room for argument.

Selena glanced at Lina. "What about you?"

A shadow passed over Lina's features, a brief, deep sorrow. "I used to be a netstrider," she said, her voice quiet. "But… I can't anymore. My nervous system can't support any mods."

"Oh. Sorry that I asked," Selena said quickly, flushing with embarrassment.

"It's okay." Lina's smile was sad but genuine. "At least I have Alyna to show me how the net looks these days." Her gaze moved to the other woman. "She's a very talented netstrider."

A faint blush touched Alyna's cheeks. She wasn't used to compliments. "Thank you. But if you could still jack in, you'd be better than me."