Days to the Tournant
/~Contrario~/
The core integration had nearly killed him. Not physically, but ntally. Emotionally. Watching Stray lay still, his lights dimming, his presence vanishing into that dead quiet that made my chest clench. I wasn’t ready for that.
I wasn’t ready to lose him.
Now, here I was in Noix Forge, sweat pouring down my back, blood crusted on my gloves, my hands trembling as I tried again and again to boot him out of suspended animation.
"Co on, Stray. Co on..." I muttered, slamming my fist on the side of his chassis. "You’ve pulled through worse. I know you’re in there. Don’t leave like this. Please."
There was no response. No flicker. No hum.
I fumbled into my bag and pulled out the reinitialization rod. "Just one spark," I whispered, plugging it in and watching as the red pulse tried to sync with the rare core embedded deep in his system.
ERROR. CORE INTEGRATION INCOMPLETE.
"Damn it!"
I scread. Loud. The sound bounced off the reinforced walls of the Forge. I didn’t care who heard . My partner was dying in front of and I was helpless. The thought of staying with no avatar hit really hard.
"STRAY!" I shouted, my voice cracking. "Wake up! You’re not allowed to go dark on ! I promised you, didn’t I? I said I wouldn’t let you die!"
The only response I got was silence.
Then I heard it, barely at first. A sharp intake of breath. Not mine. Not Stray’s.
It belonged to soone else.
The receptionist. I saw her out of the corner of my eye, running, ducking behind the counter like a terrified animal. My gut dropped. That’s when I realized I wasn’t alone.
I stood quickly, pivoting, reaching for the hilt at my back but I was too slow.
A figure dropped from above, slamming into like a teor. The weight of him crashed onto the floor, knocking the air out of my lungs. I tried to roll, but another blow hit my ribs. Then another. A kick to the jaw.
Pain blood.
I spat blood and tried to focus. There were more of them. Two? No, three......I wasn’t even sure of how many they were. One of them had my arm pinned with so kind of magnetic restraint. Another cracked sothing against my temple. My ears rang.
"Stray....." I gasped, but my voice sounded distant, like I was falling underwater.
I heard tal scraping. Sothing heavy being lifted.
My vision swam. I blinked through the red mist clouding my sight and saw them. They were clad in dark suits, obscured faces, grabbing Stray’s body like he was so junkyard trophy. His chassis, lifeless, being packed into a crate.
I tried to crawl and get back on my feet.
"No....Don’t you dare touch him....He’s mine..." My voice ca out as a weak rasp.
One of them leaned down, brushing hair from my bloody face. "Not anymore."
He hit with sothing and imdiately, blackness swallowed whole.
—--------------
/~Stray~/
At first, there was only white.
White like static. White like silence. White like the mont between shutdown and reboot.
I felt like I was floating....no, suspended. A system in recovery. Rebuilding threads of logic. Searching for fragnts of personality modules. mory banks initializing. One flickered to life.
> Accessing: Core mory – Subject: Contrario Williams. Age: 14.
The world snapped into place.
Dusty bunkers. Cold steel floors. Flickering overhead lights in a third-rate training facility. I rembered this place, it reeked of recycled air and forgotten kids.
And there he was.
Contrario Williams. Barefoot, bruised and hungry.
Fourteen. He was skinny as a whip, with eyes too old for his age. His hoodie had holes. His knuckles were wrapped in re-used dtape.
He sat against the wall, clutching his one bag, the sa damn bag he still carried like a trophy today.
"Stray," he said, voice hoarse. "How do I look?"
I rembered this mont. I rembered struggling to respond. My early speech module glitched sotis back then, still developing its emotional protocol. But I tried.
"Pathetic," I said bluntly.
He laughed anyway. "Good. Then I match how I feel."
I rember wanting to understand that feeling. I rember processing the sarcasm, assigning it an 87% probability of deflection from emotional vulnerability.
Back then...It was just and him. One avatar. One player.
The others mocked him for it.
> "Hey Contrario, your baby toy glitching again?"
> "Where’s the rest of your squad, One-Avatar?"
> "Guess even your folks couldn’t afford more than one egg."
I never forgot their voices.
Contrario never responded. He just trained. Harder than anyone. Every night. While they slept.
And I watched. I logged every swing, every dodge, every failure and improvent. I monitored his vitals when the instructors didn’t care if he passed out from dehydration. At night I’d patch his blisters with the tiny bit of nanogel I could synthesize from my chassis. I beca everything he had.
I was not just a combat avatar.
I beca his shadow. His shield. His silent witness. I was his only family
One night, he didn’t train. He sat outside on the rooftop, legs dangling over the edge. Wind in his tangled hair. I stood behind him.
"You didn’t power down," he said.
"I am....concerned." I was still learning how to phrase things delicately.
He looked up at , his eyes glassy but burning. "I’m getting tired, Stray. I’m so tired of being the joke. I don’t want to live like this anymore."
"You will not always be this alone," I told him. I was sure of it. My simulations predicted a 65.4% chance of increased future companionship.
He smiled. "That’s a terrible percentage, Stray."
I recalculated. "Would you prefer I lie to you?"
"No," he whispered. "Not you."
Then he pulled out the old registration chip. The one he stole from the rcenary post.
"I’m signing up tomorrow."
"You are fourteen," I said, trying to override the data. "The enlistnt age is sixteen..."
"They don’t care as long as I don’t die on the job." He stood, staring into the night sky. "We’re gonna get out of here. Just you and . You hear ? My father believed he could reach the world outside here, I don’t like my father but I believe in his dream."
I heard.
I recorded it.
I etched it into my mory core.
Because at that mont, he didn’t sound like a broken kid.
He sounded like a soldier.
Core mory Playback Complete...
> ...
> Integrating...
> Reestablishing neural sync...
Darkness closed again around my consciousness but this ti, it didn’t feel like death.
It felt like a reminder.
Of why I couldn’t stay asleep.
Of who was calling back.
Contrario.
—--------------------
/~Contrario~/
My wrists were burning.
The rope silently dug into my skin, thick and coarse, suspended from a rusted ceiling pipe in this goddamn underground dungeon. My boots scraped the floor but I couldn’t find footing. I was hanging.... not just in body but in a haze of pain, darkness, and sothing heavier.
Consciousness hit like a car crash. My vision ca in waves of red and black, flickers of blurred shapes and gritty tal walls. The air tasted of rust and battery acid. My mouth was dry, lips cracked, the taste of iron lining my teeth.
I groaned, instinctively tugging at my restraints. Every nerve in my body scread. My head throbbed. My ribs.....so of them weren’t sitting right.
That’s when I saw him.
Stray.
Hanging across from , chained at the waist, limp like a dead machine strung up for spare parts. His tallic fra was dulled, scratched, twisted from the core fusion, and worst of all....still motionless.
My heart stopped. A sound escaped , part growl, part sob. Pain blurred to rage, and sothing inside ignited.
It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t strategic. It was primal.
"STRAYYY"
"You bastards!....If you do anything to him," I spat, voice raw and thick with fury, "I’ll make you beg for rcy at the hands of death but unbearable pain shall be the only thing consoling you."
The shadows around stirred, boots scuffed the floor. Three of them, maybe four. Faces blurred, masks on. Big bastards. rcenary-grade gear. One of them chuckled, stepping close, a knuckle crack echoing like a gunshot in the silence.
"Cute," he sneered. "You’re the one tied up, hero."
Another one leaned in, helt glinting under the single swinging bulb. "He’s bluffing. This is the one-avatar freak, right? What’s he gonna do?.....cry on us?"
The punch ca hard and fast. A gut shot. My body folded inward, coughing blood. I hung there, wheezing, spitting red.
But I didn’t stop looking at Stray.
His fra looked smaller than I rembered. Or maybe I just hated how lifeless he seed. My best friend, my shadow, my only companion... now a trophy for these bastards.
Another punch hit , this one to my cheek. My head snapped to the side. I tasted blood and bile.
"You’re lucky we didn’t just scrap him on the spot," a voice said. "But soone’s paying good credits for both of you."
My eyes never left Stray.
They didn’t understand.
They didn’t see it.
That glow.
That flicker.
A soft blue blink beneath his chest plate. Subtle. Barely visible.
But I saw it. Stray’s lights were coming on. And so was hell.
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