Simon stood silently in the doorway for a long moment, watching her.

  Amy was hunched over the worktable. Her optic sensor flickered, scanning the defective drone in front of her with slow, imprecise movements. Thin mechanical arms twitched as she tried to align two mismatched joints, her efforts clumsy but determined. The drone wasn’t beyond repair—just a few blown fuses, frayed wires, a loose actuator. Simple enough for anyone else. But for Amy, with her fractured mind and damaged coordination, it was a herculean task.

  Simon had repaired her legs a few days ago and set up a modest room for her in the east wing of Upsilon. It wasn’t much—just four reinforced walls, a bed , a table for small tasks, and a few screens looping soft blue skies to imitate windows. He knew it was a hollow gesture, but something in him hoped it made her feel more human.

  Amy looked up, her flickering optic sensor adjusting as it focused on him.

  "Hey, Carl?"

  Simon stepped closer. "Yes, Amy?"

  She turned back to the drone. Her voice came from a degraded speaker embedded in her chest, filled with static and warbling distortion.

  "Why do I need to repair this drone?"

  He kept his voice even, gentle.

  "You’re helping me. I need it to check something down a tunnel. Remember?"

  A moment passed before she nodded—an awkward, jerking motion. "Right... a tunnel."

  It was the eighth time today. The loops in her memory were growing more frequent.

  Simon wasn’t a neurologist. He couldn’t map neural degeneration or the effects of WAU-induced mutation on the human brain. But he knew something vital had broken when her head was transferred into the robot’s frame. Her mind, once sharp and compassionate, was now a scattered echo. Some days she was lucid for hours. Others... she forgot who she was.

  Still, she tried.

  A week had passed since Upsilon had been fully restored. The facility was no longer a grave—it was alive. Power flowed seamlessly, the reactors thrummed with stability, and drones moved across its levels like cells in a body, tirelessly rebuilding.

  The shuttle tunnels had been cleared and restructured. Maintenance drones now waited by the Lambda access point, poised to enter and recover the trapped cargo—materials, parts, cortex chips, maybe even some black boxes with lost logs.

  But Simon’s focus wasn’t just on resources.

  Elias.

  They had unfinished business. And this time, he wouldn’t be caught off guard.

  A chime interrupted his thoughts. A quiet ping from the main systems.

  Simon turned back to Amy. She was still at the table, trying to secure a loose panel with a tool that shook in her grasp.

  He walked to her, crouched beside her and gently laid a hand on her shoulder.

  "Are you tired, Amy?"

  From her internal speaker came a synthetic yawn.

  "A little," she replied, soft and small.

  Simon guided her toward the bed. Her limbs creaked as he helped her lie down, positioning her carefully. She didn’t need sleep. Not really. But he had found a way to reduce the structure gel’s activity—just enough to lull her into a gentle stasis. A safe, reversible coma. One that let her rest without risking further damage.

  She looked up at him, one dim sensor flickering in the dark.

  "I just wanted to help," she murmured.

  Simon’s voice was quiet. "You are. More than you know."

  He sent the command. Her frame relaxed. The light in her sensor dimmed to a soft, pulsing glow.

  He stood at the doorway, glancing back one last time. Her broken body rested against the pillows, still and silent.

  "Hold on, Amy," he whispered. "I’ll make this right."

  Then he stepped into the corridor, and the door slid shut with a hiss of finality.

  The door slid open, and Simon stepped inside.

  The room was quiet now. All around him, robotic arms rested in place, printers idle. Just hours ago, they were busy, assembling the last of the new drones he'd ordered. Now, they waited. The air smelled faintly of ozone and something else—that clean, empty scent of machinery and sterilized hope. This place had become something strange to him. Not just a workshop.

  He walked slowly to the far end of the chamber. There it was.

  The vat.

  Inside, floating in clear, glowing gel, was his new body.

  He stopped a few feet away. Just stood there. Looking.

  It drifted in place, arms slightly out, legs loose, like it was asleep. Or dreaming. Tendrils curled and waved around it, weightless in the thick liquid. The structure gel shimmered faintly, coating every inch of it like a second skin. It looked alive. It looked... aware.

  Simon swallowed, even though he didn’t need to. Habit. He stepped closer. The only sounds were the soft hum of stabilizers and the faint whisper of air through hidden vents. Everything else was still. Waiting.

  The body was stunning. Not human—not quite. But there was a strange, unsettling grace to it. Plating flowed over the frame in smooth, black layers like sculpted glass or volcanic stone. No bolts. No seams. Just one continuous form. The chest narrowed into a glowing core, soft amber and gold pulsing beneath translucent armor. A heart that didn’t beat.

  The arms were long and strong. Not bulky. Refined. Hands like razors, yet delicate. The legs were made for speed, precision—every joint, every curve optimized. The spine held small ridges, subtle ports and connections hidden beneath armor. Places for upgrades. For weapons.

  From the back, several tendrils drifted, twitching now and then like they sensed him nearby. Like they were curious.

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  His eyes rose to the head.

  The face had no mouth. No nose. Just smooth metal, shaped with the barest hint of cheekbones and a furrowed brow. A pair of black lenses had been installed where the eyes should be.

  This body would sense heat, motion, sound, emotion.

  Simon reached out and touched the glass. His fingers shook.

  He had made this. Chosen it. This wasn’t fear. It wasn’t a shell. It was a choice. A statement.

  One detail stood out: a small pack on the back. Compact, folded in. A descent system. Something to slow a fall.

  Once, a single fall had almost doomed him. Not again.

  He remembered something he read a long time ago: Man wasn’t made for comfort. He was made for greatness.

  Maybe this was what greatness looked like now.

  He’d held onto the idea of being human long after it stopped meaning anything. Clinging to what he thought he was. To what he thought he had to be. But here, now, looking into that vat, he understood something new:

  To survive, he had to let go. To move forward, he had to change. There was no going back. No comfort in limits. No safety in pretending.

  He didn’t see armor.

  He saw evolution.

  Not born of panic. Not born of pain. But of understanding.

  He had mourned the old Simon for long enough. That man was a shadow now, left behind at the bottom of the sea.

  This wasn’t a coffin.

  It was a chrysalis.

  Simon took one last breath.

  And turned away.

  His steps echoed across the chamber as he moved into the adjacent room—a smaller space, sterile and cold, lit only by the gentle pulse of ceiling lights.

  This was where it would happen. Where everything that made him him would leave one shell and enter another.

  He lay down on the metal platform, arms relaxed by his side. Mechanical arms descended without a word or prompt, guided by a simple AI he had pieced together from salvaged code—a Frankenstein of old systems and forgotten cores scavenged from PATHOS-II's buried servers.

  With surgical precision, the arms disassembled him.

  His frame came apart in quiet clicks and hisses. Plates lifted. Wires retracted. His helmet was taken off, revealing a reinforced titanium-alloy frame that protected his core—his cortex chip, fused to the AI BOX and intertwined WAU’s organic matrix. The matrix shimmered faintly, like transparent pearls—the only organic part of his entire body.

  The AI BOX, slightly larger than a human fist, gleamed beneath the overhead lights. Its dark alloy surface was threaded with glowing white veins, pulsing softly like a living heart. At its center, the crystalline core glowed an eerie blue-white, encased in the familiar sheen of structure gel.

  A mechanical cradle closed around the fused parts and lifted them gently away.

  Above, a transport tube hissed to life. Transparent and lit from within, it resembled a tunnel from death to rebirth. His core was sealed into a capsule and carried along the rail, vanishing into the ceiling with a faint shhhk.

  Back in the main chamber, the vat awaited.

  The new body hung still, waiting for purpose.

  Then, with a whisper of motion, its torso shifted. Plating along the chest slithered apart like flowing metal, retracting in smooth layers to reveal the internal cavity—a chamber of nerve-like fiber conduits and power nodes, pulsing dimly. The glow of dormant life.

  The capsule arrived.

  Robotic arms descended again, perfectly synchronized. Guided by Simon’s crude but effective AI, they moved with grace and precision. One lifted his core from the capsule, the other extended to stabilize the open body. Slowly, reverently, they lowered the core into the chest.

  The moment it touched the socket, the body responded.

  Fiber conduits flared to life, wrapping around the device like vines around a seed. The glow from the crystalline core deepened, spreading into the body’s frame. The plating along the chest slithered back into place with a soft click.

  For several seconds, nothing happened.

  Then light surged through the veins.

  Along the spine. Down the limbs. Into the tendrils. The body twitched. The head rolled slightly, as though stirred by thought. The eyes behind the lenses, the sensors flickered to life.

  This wasn’t an upload.

  This was continuity.

  The same mind, moved forward.

  The same ghosts, carried over.

  The same choice, made twice.

  The clear gel was slowly siphoned through the opening at the bottom of the vat. It drained with a quiet slurp, receding like a tide, exposing the sleek black frame suspended above it.

  Simon dropped to his knees.

  The impact echoed softly in the chamber.

  He felt overwhelmed. Stunned. For the first time in so long, he felt.

  The gel still clung to his new form, thick and slick like oil, beading down his limbs and back in rivulets. He could feel it. Every drop. The cold of it, the weight. The metallic chill of the vat floor pressed against his knees and palms. His fingers curled instinctively. Toes flexed. Each nerve was new and alive, raw with input.

  He gasped—but there was no breath. Just a sharp intake of simulated sensation as his systems adjusted. A strange echo pulsed through his chest: not a heartbeat, but a rhythm. A steady pulse of existence.

  Above, something shifted. Nozzles extended from the top of the vat.

  A cascade of warm water poured over him.

  Simon shuddered.

  If he could’ve cried, he would have. The heat touched him like a memory. It streamed down his back, rinsing away the remnants of the gel, soothing every hyperactive sensor. For a moment, he could almost imagine skin again. Blood. A heartbeat. The shower was like arms around him.

  Then came the air.

  Warm gusts poured down from vents above, drying his frame with gentle care. His plating shimmered faintly in the light as moisture evaporated from his surface. He watched steam curl off his arms, his shoulders, rising like mist from a lake at dawn.

  The vat's glass casing hissed as it began to retract.

  Slowly, it slid upward with a low mechanical groan, disappearing into the ceiling.

  Simon remained still.

  Then he moved.

  One foot forward. Wobbling. His balance shifted and he caught himself. Again. He placed a hand on the inner wall of the vat for support. His fingers spread wide across the smooth surface. He stared at them.

  They felt real.

  He looked down at himself, every limb, every line of this new body. Not just a machine. Not just a shell. It was his. And yet, every movement was strange. Each step uncertain. He stood like a newborn, unsteady and cautious.

  His legs trembled, not from weakness, but from the flood of unfamiliar strength. Muscles that weren’t muscles—synthetic myofibers contracting with silent precision. Tendons of alloy and gel. A body forged, not born.

  He rose.

  Standing tall now, Simon stepped forward.

  Out of the vat.

  Out of the past.

  And into something new.

  He was more than machine. More than man.

  It didn’t take long.

  Once Simon’s systems were fully online, his neural pathways syncing seamlessly with the new body, instinct took over. He had designed this frame, coded its core, forged it with sleepless precision—and now, he was it.

  He stood in the vast testing hall of the factory floor, surrounded by the quiet monoliths of assembly lines and dormant machinery. Overhead, cables swayed slightly from the air circulation. He crouched low, palms to the floor, sensors calibrating every contour of the terrain.

  Then he moved.

  He launched forward like a coiled spring let loose, crossing the entire factory bay in a blur. His feet barely touched the ground before he flipped, twisted midair, and landed on a pipe with feline grace. Another leap. A double backflip, then a front roll down a sloped conveyor belt. His limbs adjusted perfectly with every move, flowing like liquid precision.

  He grabbed a passing robotic arm, swinging upward with ease, momentum carrying him into a spiral. He flipped again midair, pushing off a support beam, catching the edge of a high platform with the tips of his fingers. There was no strain, no hesitation.

  His body obeyed.

  He danced.

  A tendril burst from his forearm—long, black, and shimmering with threads of structure gel. It whipped forward, latching onto a gantry rail high above. The instant it secured, Simon tensed and launched himself upward, slingshotting toward the ceiling like a missile.

  He reached near the top of the chamber, high above the factory floor.

  Then he let go.

  He fell.

  Not with fear—but with thrill.

  As he plummeted, more tendrils erupted from his back, unfurling in perfect harmony along his spine. They stretched and twisted, absorbing the speed of his fall, slowing him with an eerie, fluid grace. He flipped again at the last second, letting himself crash back-first toward the ground.

  But he didn’t crash.

  The tendrils caught him. Cupped him. Softened the impact like dozens of gentle limbs. He touched down silently, his back brushing the floor. His body hunched slightly, legs bent, tendrils still spread around him like the legs of a spider or the coiling arms of an octopus.

  He lay there for a second, staring up at the factory ceiling.

  Then he laughed.

  A full, open laugh that echoed across the metal walls.

  He thrust a fist upward, exultant.

  “Hell yeah! I feel like a damn superhero!” he shouted.

  The lights shimmered off his frame as he rose.

  “And all it took was almost dying a dozen times in this shithole.”

  His voice was electric, pulsing with a joy so sharp it was almost pain. For the first time in so long, Simon felt alive—not despite the machine, but because of it.

  No longer a shadow of a man.

  He was becoming more than he had ever dared to imagine.

  Hey everyone!

  I just wanted to take a moment to thank you for reading my story. Writing this story has been an amazing experience so far, and I’ve poured a lot of time and heart into it.

  you—

  What’s your opinion of the story so far?

  What do you enjoy most? Any characters or moments that stood out? And of course, if there’s anything you think could be improved, I’m all ears.