Several days had bled into the calendar before Rose and Feng finally returned to the dilapidated apartment complex they called home.
"Yo, fatty! We're back~!" Feng's voice echoed up the stairwell as they climbed the concrete steps.
Only heavy, suffocating silence answered her.
As his boots met the next step, Rose's internal sensors flagged an anomaly in the ambient atmosphere. Something was profoundly wrong.
"Probably passed out in a diabetic coma," Feng muttered dryly, trying to shake off the unease as they reached their floor.
The humor vanished instantly. Rose's optic sensors locked onto deep, violent gouges tearing through the wooden frame of their front door. Inside, the apartment had been utterly gutted.
"What in the hell...?" Feng whispered, her pace slowing to a cautious crawl.
Rose swept the room, his processor analyzing the wreckage. Tables, chairs, and high-end monitors had been impaled, pierced by massive, jagged puncture holes. Near the steel storage locker in the corner, his thermal imaging picked up a faint, residual heat signature radiating from within.
"Someone is inside that locker," Rose reported, his hand instinctively drifting toward his side.
"Copy that. Stay sharp," Feng muttered. She crept forward, her fingers wrapping around the handle of the metal locker. With a sharp yank, she threw it open.
Feng recoiled, the color completely draining from her face. "No... please, no..."
The tech-savvy, Bao Wei, stared back at them with lifeless eyes. A horrific, fist-sized cavity had been a hole clean through his chest. His limp, cold body tumbled forward, collapsing heavily against Feng's shoulder.
"Ah!"
In a panic, she shoved the decaying corpse away, letting it roll onto the floor. As he landed face-down, a cruel message carved deeply into his back in raw, crimson slashes was laid bare:
YOU'RE NEXT!
"Zanlin... that monster killed him." Feng dropped to her knees, slamming her fists onto the concrete in a wave of bitter, helpless rage.
Faced with her grief, Rose immediately patched a secure channel through to Eve.
"What is it, Rose?" Eve's voice answered over the comm.
"Eve, I have grave news. Adam has terminated the hacker to deliver a message directly to you." Rose captured a high-resolution image of the message carved into Bao Wei's back and transmitted the data packet.
The line fell silent for a heartbeat before Eve's voice returned, shaking with a cold, terrifying fury. "Damn it! That fucker! Fine... if he wants a piece of me that badly, I'll bait the bastard out myself. Meet me at the eastern bay at dusk. This time, I won't make the same mistake. I promise. Out."
The line severed, leaving only static.
Rose knelt beside Feng, placing a heavy, synthetic hand on her shoulder.
"We should have come back sooner, Rose," she whispered, her voice cracking.
"Perhaps this is my karma catching up with me," the machine replied, his voice flat but carrying a strange weight. "I possessed the tactical window to eliminate him back then. Had Eve not stayed my hand, I would have neutralized the target. It is not her failure. Perhaps... the fault lies with me."
"No, Rose. What's done is done," Feng said, wiping her eyes as she looked at him. "We can't rewrite the past. The only thing we can do now is make sure this never happens again."
Rose nodded slowly, accepting it.
As evening crawled over the city, casting a bruised purple hue across the sky, Rose and Feng made their way to the desolate, rusting docks.
A tall silhouette stood at the edge of the pier, leaning heavily against the iron railing that overlooked the black, churning river. It was Eve.
"Do you have tactical parameters, Eva?" Feng asked, approaching her cautiously.
"I've coordinates with Mr. Xu," Eve replied, not turning to face them. "He's cleared us to use his private estate in Chongqing as bait to draw the bastard out. Adam has backing, a network of syndicates pulling his strings. Anyone associated with him will be systematically erased. Feng, Rose... if I don't make it back from this, just know... we did what we had to do to survive another day."
"What are you talking about, Eve? No! I am not letting you go on some suicide mission!" Feng lunged forward, grabbing Eve's arm. "Don't do this to me, Eva. Out of the three of us, I'd gladly lay down my life for you guys. But please, stop taking these insane, suicidal gambles!"
"There are no other cards left to play, girl," Eve muttered, her gaze lost in the dark water. "Maybe I should have listened to you. But in the end, blood cannot wash away the sins of my eyes. The blades that carved them up back then... they made me the monster I am today. Both of you... I..."
Rose tilted his head, his auditory sensors analyzing her vocal patterns. "Eve, your recent behavior exhibits a high level of cognitive divergence. You are glitched."
"Yes, Rose. I despise the thing I've become," Eve admitted, a bleak, sorrowful smile stretching across her face as she patted the machine's shoulder. "But this is the final reckoning. Perhaps... the beginning is indeed the end. We started with violence; we must drown in it to finish it. Correct?"
Gently but firmly, Eve pried Feng's fingers off her arm. She turned, stepping into the narrow, shadow-drenched alleyway, vanishing into the darkness before they could utter another word. Rose and Feng stood frozen, the silence between them as heavy as lead.
"At least... the two of us remain," Rose broke the silence, his fingers closing around Feng's trembling arm.
"I need... to rest, Rose. I need anything to just shut my brain up," she whispered.
"You are experiencing severe acute stress. System diagnostics project a recovery window of forty-eight hours."
Feng let out a ragged sigh. "Hey, Rose... if we actually survive this... what do you want to do?"
"I think this city is beyond restoration," Rose replied, staring out at the smog-choked horizon. "Perhaps we should depart from this place. Ever since I practiced the meditation techniques taught by the monk, I have unlocked the parameter of imagination. I have rendered a simulation of our future. You, myself, and Eve... relocating to a modest dwelling. Commencing a normal, civilian existence."
Feng offered a faint, melancholy nod, though she offered no verbal response. They stood in silence as the sun finally drowned beneath the horizon.
Later that night, they carried Bao Wei's body to a patch of earth beneath a solitary, withered tree adjacent to their building.
As Rose drove the shovel into the dirt, he turned his glowing green eyes toward Feng. "When humans cease to function... where do they go?"
"Depends on what they did when they were breathing," Feng replied, her eyes distant. "If they were good, they get to rest up in the sky. If they were wicked, they get dragged down to the underworld to burn all over again. We bury them because we believe a fragment of the soul lingers... waiting, hoping that maybe God will be merciful enough to breathe life back into their vessels. But nobody gives a damn about these rituals anymore. Even Eve sees them as nothing but archaic nonsense. This world is a meat grinder, Rose. The poor get trampled simply because they can't afford to feed themselves. It's pathetic. Never judge a thief for stealing. Until you've tasted the rot of the life that forced them to steal, you'll never understand."
"Thank you for the good instruction," Rose replied smoothly.
He used the shovel to widen the trench, preparing the earth. Feng knelt, gently wrapping a clean white cloth over Bao Wei's swollen, battered face, whispering her final farewell.
"Leave it all behind, Bao. I always knew your teasing was just your way of showing you cared. I was never angry with you, not once. You didn't deserve to go out like this. If there's a next life... I hope you get to be my little brother. Let your spirit leave this broken shell and find some peace."
Feng nodded to Rose. With delicate, calculated movements, the male android lifted the heavy, lifeless frame of their friend, lowering him into the grave with utmost care. Together, under the silent, rain-slicked sky, they shoveled the earth back over him until the grave was completely sealed.
The two of them walked back up into the vacant, hollowed-out apartment. Seeking to drown the suffocating stress clawing at her mind, Feng ripped open the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of distilled liquor, and began to drink heavily. Before long, her consciousness started to blur, drifting into that familiar, erratic state she had been in when she first laid eyes on Rose. Stripping off her damp outerwear, she was left in just a tight, black tactical tank top.
"You know, Rose... I really wanna take you to see the dragon dance in Hong Kong," she rambled, her voice slurring as she gestured wildly. "They have these fireworks that go pew-pew-pew up into the sky and then boom! They explode into these beautiful, pastel cake colors..."
"Alcohol induces neural instability and cognitive disorientation," Rose noted, his mechanical voice cutting through her daze. "I advise you to close your eyes and remain stationary."
At the base of her iron staff, a small red panda keychain dangled limply. Disregarding his analytics, Feng reached down and hoisted the heavy weapon into her grip. "I can still stand. Come on. You have to fight me."
"You are intoxicated, Feng. I strongly advise resting before you sustain self-inflicted trauma from that asset."
"One day, you and I... we're gonna have to go at it. Fight, fight, fight! A duel to the death! To the bitter, bloody end, hahaha!" The manic laughter suddenly choked in her throat, and tears began to track down her chin, cutting through the grime on her face. "Look at me... laughing until I cry. Haha..." She aggressively wiped her eyes. "I know you're worried about me, Rose. You love your big sister, don't you? Ah-ha~"
"I do not yet possess the algorithmic parameters to comprehend what love entails."
"Oh, look at you~ playing hard to get," she teased, stumbling forward and burying her face against Rose's rigid shoulder. "But I love you anyway. And I swear I'll be a good big sister to you... so I can... so I can drag a kid-brained android like you out of this filthy, godforsaken life." She nudged him hard. "I'm gonna love you like a little sister—uh, brother! Hee-hee. Sigh... My life is just one big tragic opera. Aiya... Xin Jia Yu Yi... and I'm just a broke peasant... mumble..."
"That round you discharged during your engagement with Eva," the machine inquired, steering the conversation back to logic. "Did you genuinely intend to terminate her life?"
"That bullet... I just wanted to make Eve snap out of it. Besides, even if I hit her, it's not like that psycho would actually die..."
Feng's voice trailed off. For a full, agonizing minute, the apartment fell dead silent, the heavy rain outside filling the void until Rose spoke again.
"The construct of love... what physical parameters does it manifest as?"
"A heart," she whispered, her fingers drifting up to tap a small heart-shaped pendant hanging around Rose's neck. "A sweet, pink heart, just like... this one. It's a symbol people use on Valentine's Day. If you're secretly harboring feelings for someone, Rose, that's the day you bring them a gift. It doesn't even have to be a romantic soulmate, just someone you hold a profound connection with. Man, talking about this really takes me back to when I was a kid..."
As she ran her hand across the machine's back, her fingers hooked around the hilt of his short katana. With a swift, fluid motion, she drew the blade. The pristine, mirror-like sheen of the steel reflected her face, intoxicated and hollowed out by the distilled poison running through her veins.
"It must be so nice to be like you, Rose. No capacity to register pain. Just a perpetual, stoic frown."
"I calculate that remaining as you are is the optimal variable. I cannot define my own existence, whereas you possess the innate realization of your humanity. Unlike me, who must operate strictly within programmed boundaries."
"Then why the hell don't you just smash those boundaries to pieces?"
Hearing this, the machine tilted his head entirely to the side, his green eyes widening to an unnatural, massive degree.
"Whoa, Rose... you're creeping me out. Don't roll your eyes at me like that," Feng muttered, shuddering. She lifted the katana close to her face, inhaling deeply. "Smells so good. Ah~"
Losing her grip on reality entirely, she extended her tongue and slid it right along the razor-sharp edge of the blade. A thin, vivid streak of fresh crimson instantly began to well up from her lip. "Ow... sliced it clean open."
Seeing the self-harm, Rose immediately intervened, using his cold, synthetic fingers to pry her jaws open to evaluate the laceration.
"The incision is superficial. Application of thermal reduction should accelerate cellular coagulation."
Rose opened his jaws wide, exposing a specialized cryogenic vent beneath his artificial tongue. He leaned his face mere inches from the dazed, open-mouthed girl, discharging a localized blast of freezing vapor directly onto her wound. Within seconds, the bleeding was completely sealed by the frost.
"S-So cold~ M-My tongue is completely numb now," she slurred.
Rose retrieved the katana from her loose grip and secured it back into the spinal scabbard. "Goodnight, Rose," Feng mumbled, her eyelids dropping heavily as she collapsed into his arms.
Rose retrieved a coarse, heavy blanket, bunching it up to cradle her head. He sat perfectly still, an unblinking sentinel keeping watch through the bleak night, until the neon haze gave way to the pale, warm amber of the morning sun.
When Feng finally opened her eyes, she was met with a striking, vibrant sight on the concrete wall ahead. It was a massive, detailed sketch of herself and Eva, meticulously drawn with colored pencils.
Rose was sitting nearby, his back to her, silently staring at the masterpiece he had just perfected.
"Wow..." Feng whispered, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. "Did you draw this all by yourself?"
The machine suddenly snapped his neck around at a terrifying, unnatural ninety-degree angle to face her. "I encountered a processing error. I cannot recall the parameters of my own face."
Because he did not yet understand his own identity, Rose had been unable to include himself in the portrait.
Understanding his dilemma, Feng walked over, picked up a crimson pencil, and sketched a bright red heart right between the portraits of Eve and the machine.
"There. I know you'll like it," she smiled, placing her hands on the machine's shoulders and gently rotating his head back toward the wall to view her addition.
"Thank you," the machine replied softly, his green optic sensors locking onto the canvas as he continued to study the image of his makeshift family.