Residual
1684 Words
She is walking.
The street is narrow but alive—lined with small buildings painted in soft, fading colors. Pale blues, sun-washed yellows, a green that has dulled with time. Windows glow with warm light, curtains half drawn. Somewhere nearby, someone laughs, the sound loose and unguarded. The air smells like bread pulled too early from an oven, like smoke from a hearth, like something sweet she can’t name but recognizes anyway.
It is quiet in the way small towns are quiet. Not empty. Not afraid. Just unguarded.
Her footsteps don’t echo.
People pass her without looking twice. A man carrying a crate nods politely as she moves by, shifting his grip to keep it from slipping. A woman steps aside to let her pass, murmuring an apology that she doesn’t hear. Someone hums as they sweep dust from a doorway. A dog barks once and then settles.
At the end of the street, a bell rings. A door opens. Somewhere, a child is calling for their mother, voice high and impatient.
She keeps walking.
Her hand lifts smoothly, the motion so natural it barely registers as a choice. The first man falls before he understands what’s happening. There is no shout. No warning. Surprise flashes across his face—confusion more than fear—before his body collapses, the crate hitting the ground beside him and splitting open.
Fruit rolls across the street.
No one notices.
She steps past him.
A woman stands outside a shop, turning a wooden sign from CLOSED to OPEN. She looks up just in time to see nothing at all. The sound is sharp, brief. The sign swings loosely from one hinge as the woman crumples against the doorframe, her hand still half-raised.
Still, no one notices.
She moves through the town like something slipping between moments. A presence that leaves gaps rather than marks. Doors open and close. Voices carry on. A conversation continues for a heartbeat too long before breaking off mid-sentence.
A man in the street.
A woman at a window.
Another further down the block, stepping out of a doorway with a cup still warm in their hands.
She does not rush.
There is no urgency in her movements. No hesitation, either. Each step follows the last with quiet certainty, like the path is already laid out beneath her feet.
By the time someone finally screams, she is already several streets away.
The sound tears through the air, raw and disbelieving. Others join it—shouts, questions, a name called too loudly. Feet pound against stone. A door slams. Somewhere glass shatters.
The first plume of smoke rises behind her, dark and wrong against the clear sky. Then another. Then another. The smell changes—burning wood, fabric, something acrid and sharp that stings the back of the throat.
Bells ring again. This time frantic.
She pauses at the edge of town.
Flames are climbing now, licking up wooden walls and curling through open windows. Fire leaps where it shouldn’t, feeding on panic and dry timber alike. People are running. Tripping. Grabbing for one another and coming up empty-handed. Someone tries to beat back the fire with a blanket and drops it when the heat bites too hard.
A child is crying somewhere, the sound thin and piercing, swallowed by the growing roar.
She watches.
Her face doesn’t change.
She turns away as the heat blooms behind her, walking forward while the town burns itself into noise and light. Screams rise, overlap, break apart. Smoke thickens the sky, blurring the world into gray and orange.
She keeps walking.
Darkness slams down.
—
“—075? Can you hear me?”
The darkness peels away slowly, like layers being stripped back.
Light burns behind her eyes.
She opens them.
A young man leans over her.
Too young for the lines of worry carved into his face. Early twenties, maybe younger—dark hair falling into his eyes, skin sallow with exhaustion. His lab coat looks oversized on him, sleeves shoved up unevenly, one cuff still folded higher than the other like he’d meant to fix it and forgot.
His hands grip the edge of the table hard enough that his knuckles have gone white.
Relief crosses his face when her eyes focus.
“Okay,” he breathes. “Okay, good.”
He glances over his shoulder, then back at her, like he expects the room itself to be listening.
“You scared me,” he says, quieter now. “They said you’d be fine. They always say that.”
Her vision sharpens. The ceiling resolves into white segmented panels, seams too perfect, lights too bright. There is no warmth here. No shadows to soften the edges. The air hums faintly, layered beneath another sound she can feel more than hear, vibrating somewhere deep inside her.
She tries to move.
Nothing happens.
Panic flickers—brief, contained, like a spark quickly smothered.
“Don’t,” he says quickly, stepping closer. Not a command. A plea. “You’re still rebooting. If you push too hard, it’ll—” He stops himself, jaw tightening. “Just… don’t.”
She stills.
He exhales shakily and runs a hand through his hair. “They opened your chassis again. I told them the diode readings were stable, but they don’t listen.” His mouth twists. “They never listen.”
Power diode.
The words settle heavier this time. Not understood—but recognized, the way a bruise recognizes pressure.
“They keep asking why you don’t feel,” he says.
The sentence sounds practiced, like something he’s been forced to repeat in reports and briefings until it lost all meaning. “Why you don’t develop emotional variance. Why you don’t… break.”
He looks at her then, really looks—eyes flicking over her face like he’s searching for something he’s afraid of finding.
“You’re the oldest operational unit they have,” he continues. “The only one that never degraded. Never destabilized. Every new model—they trace it back to you. Your architecture. Your core structure.”
His jaw tightens.
“You’re the reason they keep building them,” he says quietly. “They think you’re the key. Proof that it can be done right.” A bitter edge creeps into his voice. “They just can’t figure out how.”
Silence stretches between them.
Something tightens in her chest. Not pain. Not fear.
Pressure.
The hum beneath her skin surges, then stutters.
Her lips part.
“I… want… to be… free.”
The sound that comes out barely resembles a voice.
It’s rough. Scraped raw. Each word drags, distorted and uneven, like it has to force its way through damaged pathways. The syllables fracture at the edges, mechanical and fragile all at once.
His breath catches.
“Oh—” He steps closer without meaning to, then stops himself. “No. No, they didn’t—”
He presses his lips together, hard.
“They damaged your voice module,” he says softly. “When they put you back together.” His hands curl into fists at his sides. “They rushed it. They always rush it.”
He looks sick.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “You weren’t supposed to wake like this. You weren’t supposed to remember enough to—”
Free.
The word hangs between them, heavier than any command.
“They’re going to tear you apart to figure it out,” he says finally.
Voices drift faintly through the corridor beyond the door. Boots. Laughter. Someone complaining about a late shift.
His shoulders tense.
“I wasn’t supposed to be assigned to you,” he says, words spilling faster now. “I asked for data analysis. Or diagnostics. Anything but field units.” A bitter huff of breath. “They said this would be good for my career.”
He leans closer, lowering his voice. “I can’t fix what they’ve done. Not all of it. But I can hide some things. Mask your readings. Make you look… simpler.”
He hesitates.
“They’ll notice eventually.”
The voices outside grow louder.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he admits, barely audible. “I don’t want to be here. And I don’t want you here either.”
He meets her gaze, fear and resolve tangled together.
“If I help you—if I slow them down—we need a plan. Not now, not like this, but soon. Before they decide to open you up again.” His mouth twists. “Before they decide you’re a problem.”
The door handle rattles faintly.
His head snaps up.
“Oh—no,” he whispers. “They’re early.”
He looks back at her, urgency sharpening every word. “Listen to me. When they come in, you don’t react. You don’t track them. You don’t think too loud, okay?”
The lights flicker.
“I’ll come back,” he says quickly. “I swear. We’ll figure something out. Just—just stay quiet.”
The room blurs.
His face fades as darkness rushes back in, swallowing his voice mid-thought.
—
She opens her eyes again.
This time, the room is gone.
The corridor is gone.
The town is gone.
She is awake.
Her breath comes sharp and fast, chest rising as if she’s been running. For a moment, she can still smell it—the sterile air, the metal, the smoke, the heat.
Her hands curl into the blankets.
The echo of screams and gunfire lingers in her ears. The weight of something deadly still feels real in her hands. Too real.
The hum beneath her skin doesn’t fade like it usually does after sleep. It’s louder now. Agitated. Unsettled.
The dreams are getting worse, she thinks.
No—different.
They aren’t fading when she wakes. They aren’t blurring at the edges like normal dreams do. They’re sharp. Complete. Like memories that don’t belong to her but refuse to let go.
She stares at the ceiling, heart pounding.
They feel real.
And the hum beneath her skin is screaming.
- Writer
