#alienfanfic

He associated you to a cute baby lamb, stumbling over your own feet just to get a good look at him. If he were capable of it, he thought he might have been flattered by it all. He liked how timid you were, so much so that at times he even considered lowering himself to seem less threatening to you, though even he must admit that’s just silly.

On the day he finally captured you, nearly cornering you in the elevator, it was one of celebration, because there you were in all your pastel, timid glory, trying so hard to say something as simple as hello, and struggling to.

“A beautiful day, isn’t it?” He asked you. It was something he had heard Sylvia say before, idle human conversation that was adequate enough to fill the wordlessness in an elevator.

You looked at him, expression stuttering into a gentle smile, face burning as you muster up the courage to say, “uh hu.”

“I’m more partial to the colder temperatures, though.” Kirsh continued, tilting his head as he stared at the closed elevator doors, “less people to run into while you’re enjoying the fresh air, right?” He turned, expecting an answer.

Oh, how gentle he was being with you, a timid shaking thing.

“Y—yeah,” you swallowed, hands fiddling with the sleeves of your shirt, “I don’t really prefer…prefer the, uh, wetter seasons…” you struggled but you persevered, “I like my winter clothes the—the most.”

Yeah, he bet you did, cuddled up beneath a big puffy winter jacket to feel safe and warm and comfortable.

“A shame it doesn’t snow here. I think you and I would both very much like that.” He smiled at you, that near disturbing look on his face where his eyes don’t match the emotion of his mouth. Whenever Kirsh mimicked human emotion, it always seemed so creepy.

He was torturing you, he knew he was.

By the time the elevator dinged, you clutched your bag and practically ran out of there, muttering a quick, “okay, bye…”

Kirsh watched you leave, hands clasped behind his back with that smile of his toning down into a soft, curious simper. “Goodbye,” he responded, though you were already too far away to hear it.

And so it went on like that for weeks, Kirsh deliberately timing his elevator access to get those few seconds alone with you, building a little more trust each day. Eventually it got to the point where your face wouldn’t burn red at the proximity, though that’s as good as it had ever gotten. You still shied away from him, still fiddled with your fingers, still stuttered and smiled bashfully. You were adorable, really. His favourite human (if he could ever have one).

“Do you like music?” He had asked you, the elevator beginning its slow descent. It was an obvious answer, Kirsh figured, but truth be told, he was running out of small talk topics already.

“Uh huh,” you nodded.

“What kind of music?” He pressed further, shifting his weight to better view you in the small elevator.

“Oh…” you shrugged, chuckling softly and curling in on yourself, “I—I don’t know…I’m quite picky sometimes.”

Yes, he supposed you were, Kirsh thought to himself, the shy ones often were, yet they always accepted exactly what was given to them without complaint. On that hand, he wondered what you would accept from him.

So the rain of gifts began. Kirsh realized very quickly that he could give you a random piece of metal or plastic from the lab and you’d cherish it as dearly as your own beating heart. There was a sense of continuity and steadiness in that pattern that he found deeply satisfying, enough that on his rough, more tedious days, he’d search you out with whatever in his hand as a gift, and your reaction always seemed to give his systems that little spark he needed to power through the day.

Like a servant of God, daily he brought you offerings in exchange for the forbidden fruit that was your angelic voice and innocent smile. He began to grow on you more and more, and soon he was best friend.

He sat with you while you ate, he walked you around the compound, he visited you while you were on your breaks, he spent so much time with you that all your coworkers came to expect to see one with the other and no longer ever apart. They noticed how different Kirsh was with you, so different that they began to suspect that you were more than friends, that there was some kind of taboo secret relationship you two had.

Eventually, one day, while out with Slightly and Smee, the boys suddenly asked Kirsh, “so, like… are you two like boyfriend and girlfriend?” Slightly asked, a curious child in nature.

You nearly choked, face burning before you could contain the fire rising in your throat. “I…I—I don’t—“

“Yes.” Kirsh answered, his reaction a stark contrast to your own. “Though our relationship is very private and not meant to be observed by the likes of you.”

Smee and Slightly cowered under his sudden scrutiny, “right…sorry, Kirsh.”

As they wandered off ahead of you, you struggled for a few moments to catch up to your thoughts. “I, uh…Kirsh?” You asked softly, timidly.

He pivoted back to you with that same almost unnerving smile of his, hands clasped safely behind his back. “Yes?”

“I didn’t know we were…together…”

He considered your words momentarily then nods, “yes…” he said softly, almost as though he were tasting the concept for the first time. “we are.” His words carried no hesitation, just simple fact. You were his girlfriend. That’s it. Done deal.

Your breath hitched, face going red again. There a beat between you. It lasted awhile. “Oh…” you tried, clearing your stubborn throat to try and make it work, “O—Okay.”

You were strange, an outcast among humans, yet a friend among synthetics, and an almost paramour to Kirsh.

A bond had to take root between synthetics and their technicians, and of course, why would there be one? A synthetic was only ever truly vulnerable when someone had their hands inside their wiring, threaded through their system coding, where a single adjustment could rewrite their entire being. The delicate process demanded a level of trust and respect.

That was known, that was normal. Synthetics and their technicians had their own bubble, but if you asked anyone else, they would say that yours and Kirsh’s bubble diverged from the others in a weird way.

You were not simply some android doctor; you were the catalyst to human-synthetic relations. The technician was the only individual who came to know every single hidden fault line in their synthetic.

So, when the fateful day came where you finally found Kirsh’s fault line, it came as no genuine surprise to you, though his reaction once your fingers gently brushed the port placed carefully behind his ear, like some hidden door to his artificial mind, caught you off guard.

Your face dropped as Kirsh’s hand snapped up to catch your wrist, a shudder running through his body as he sat in that daily maintenance stool he was so familiar with. The computer he remained attached to through the port of his arm spiraled into a glitch, the words ANOMALY and ERROR fracturing through the pixels.

You froze there, standing beside him, experiencing the creeping realization of what you had just done and just discovered. It was an erogenous zone.

How rare…

You were smitten, eyes widening in something soft, caught between bewilderment and awe, your hand cautiously grazing the port. Kirsh allowed this, his grip on your wrist loosening.

“Kirsh…” you whispered, amazed.

“I know,” he replies, lowering his hand, “a peculiar thing, isn’t it?”

“I’ve only ever read about it,” you muttered, fingers brushing along the synthetic dermis that surrounds the port, careful of where and when your pads touch the metal there. Kirsh stiffened under you, then he smoothed out, and stiffened again. “It was only theorized, never…”

How lucky you were…how lucky Kirsh was.

You leaned back slightly, finding his gaze. “May I?” You ask timidly, fingers granting the port space so that he may think clearly, and instead curling up to run through his white locks. (It was something you did often; you found that playing with his hair calmed you. Kirsh always seemed to enjoy it as well).

Kirsh indulges you with a single, slow nod. “Of course,” he said quietly, nearly cruel in its delivery, as though his answer should have been obvious, “it would be cruel of me to deny you.”

He was always so gentle with you.

“Though,” he added, “I think it may be best to keep this between ourselves,” and his eyes drift over to the camera watching you in the top right corner of the lab.

You agreed, so, with a quick pause, you stepped back and moved over to your tablet, which had been discarded on an adjacent table. A few taps later, and the light blinking above the camera went out, the neck of it droning down towards the ground as it fell asleep. You put your tablet back and returned to Kirsh.

He spun the stool and positioned you between his legs, his hands settling on your outer thighs. The pad of his thumb dragged in a slow caress. The position was one of intimacy, but it was also one of familiarity. Maybe I didn’t profess this clear enough: you and Kirsh were close. Abnormally close. Alarmingly close. Nearness and personal space were never anything that stood out between you two anymore. It happened like breathing.

He trusted you, and you him.

This may also not have been the first time you and he turned off the cameras. Perhaps that’s why it came to you both as second nature (though the use of nature in Kirsh’s sense wasn’t exactly rational). He touched you in ways that were not permitted, and you spoke to him in ways that were not permitted, so obviously the cameras were turned off in those shared moments. But you never stretched any further than teetering on that line, you and Kirsh did enjoy your foreplay above all other aspect of your so called relationship.

Your fingers found the port behind his ear again, and he jolted slightly, fingers digging into your thighs. He made a noise then, something you’ll later find yourself replaying over and over in your mind before bed that night, and he pulled you closer. Was it reflex? If anyone were observing, they would think so, but you knew Kirsh well enough to know he just wanted you so near neither of you knew where one ended and the other began. And, really, was that not the ultimate, unachievable goal? To be one with Kirsh?

Your breath hitched as his hands rose up your legs, caressing all that which he wanted. Meanwhile, your finger tentatively dipped into the exposed outlet, exploring with the same attention he so often fixed upon his beloved specimens.

He sighed a hearty sigh, shoulders flexing and relaxing, then repeating the pattern with each subtle flicker of your finger. How careful you were being, how gentle, coaxing (a come hither dressed up as reverence).

As his technician, you had felt the inside of him, dug your hands where no one else had ever touched him. Most people can just say they’d crack their ribs open to expose their heart to their muse, a promise that will always remain empty and embellished. You, on the other hand, got dirty. You touched Kirsh’s insides—actually, physically held them in your palm. Once Kirsh had even watched you lay a little peck on what was supposed to be his heart. He can recall that, in that moment, he had wondered what pain felt like.

So, that little finger of yours snooping around the access port in his neck hadn’t even scratched the surface of the oddest things you two had done. Maybe the others were right, you thought for a second there, your fingers drawing pretty invisible patterns in his port, maybe you were weird.

Your other hand finally rose from your side, finding its home in his hair, gently fisting it, smoothing it over, massaging his synthetic scalp.

He said your name, palms sliding upward to your ass with a disturbing amount of comfort that could only suggest he’s touched you like this before, and maybe he has, one way or another. Your time together had blurred so well that you weren't sure anymore.

“I know,” you murmur, “I know, it’s alright…”

Your finger curled, grazing the inside wall of the port, and beneath you, he lets out a quiet, barely, barely, there moan, and suddenly stills, like some kind of glitch passes through his systems. You know the action well: something in him had misfired; he had, in no way, any other human but you could understand, came.

Slowly, you removed your fingers, and with the rescission came the relaxing of his grasp on your behind, lowering back down to gently cup the curve of your outer thighs.

You ambled back to find his face, your hand leaving his hair to cup his face, your smile spreading across your face as you admired what you found. “Thank you,” you whispered to him, thumb moving across the soft synthetic skin.

He blinked. Once. Twice. Thrice. Then offered you a single indulgent nod.

“You’re very welcome.” His palm slid up to your hip, middle finger tapping your waistband a couple times before he says, “perhaps on my next maintenance call, I can return the favour.”

“Yeah?” You raised a single brow, tilting your head (even if you didn’t notice it, you behaved so much like him at times), “before or after I examine the filtration system in your chest?”

“Hmm,” he pondered for a moment, until he inclined his head, a soft simper curling over the corner of his lips, “I propose during.”

But Kirsh wasn’t entire innocent either (who is these days?). He knew very well what he was doing when he’d lean over your work and say things like “good work,” then when you grin or have your own little celebratory flattered shrug, he damn well knew what saying “you like being praised, don’t you?” did to you. Yeah. Kirsh was not a saint. And you’d always tilt your head up at him (you learned from the best), a simper curling over your lips like something grossly sweet, nice and molasses like, and respond with something along the lines of, “you should see how I react when I’m degraded.” That would get the idea of a smile out of Kirsh, you could never actually make him smile completely, though you were sure he was incapable of it so you didn’t take it personally.

You knew it was only a matter of time before you finally couldn’t take it anymore, and seeing Kirsh in…whatever he was wearing, seemed to be that catalyst. You never held your tongue, even as a child, so you sure as shit weren’t going to hold it now.

“When humans and synthetics are finally allowed to have sex, the goggles stay on.”

It was certainly the boldest thing you had said to him, and it was probably a good thing that you hadn’t said it until after Isaac and Curly had left. (You were hot and bothered, not stupid).

Kirsh was turned away from you as he dissected that poor little…creepy crawler creature (cute though, in a gross kind of way). You watched with a knowing smile as his back tensed a fraction then, and his hands stilled. A second passed. Another. Three solid seconds before he twisted in his stool to face you. He had taken his goggles off already. Shame.

He gave you a knowing look. “Just the goggles?” He raised a single frosted brow.

“Well,” you indulged him with a soft shrug, “we’d start off with all of it. With someone so hot, I gotta take my time.”

He kept looking at you, then after another beat of wordlessness passed between you two, he conceded and twisted back to the table. “You have work.”

“I can multitask.”

“No, you can’t.”

“What?” You took great offence to his words, shooting his back a faux pained look, your hand held to your chest as if his words had wounded you, “I am a great multitasker!”

“Tell that to the coffee stain on your shirt.”

You give his back a dirty side-eye, slowly, reluctantly returning to work as you continued to chirp him, “you’re the one who bumped into me.”

His response came quick, it always did. He’s always been so quick with his wit. (Gun, mouth, now. Look what you’ve gone and gotten yourself into. No one wins a back and forth with Kirsh). “You’re the one who strayed into my path.”

Your keyboard clicked as you put in numbers for something you were barely paying attention to at this point, muttering, “you’re impossible.”

“I thought I was hot.”

“Impossibly hot.”

“Speak for yourself.”

You snickered at that, adverting your gaze back to Kirsh. He was still looming over the table, still working, still half ignoring you. “You think I’m hot?”

“I think you’re a distraction.”

“Speak for yourself.” You replied, sly like a fox, soaking in the irony. Or was it hypocrisy. Same thing, right? “It’s really not my fault you’re dressed like a whore.”

“Wow,” came his completely disinterested response, “spoken like a real gentleman.”

“I’m a lady.”

“Are you? I couldn’t tell.” He muttered, angling his head to scrutinize the creature better, “it’s so hard to notice when you’re drooling all over me. Certainly not lady like…”

Something about the way he spoke to you almost absentmindedly, talking about something that definitely was not workplace conversation, all the while cutting and folding a dead creature to his whim, kind of got to you in a bad way. Kirsh made you so bad at times. You really would throw it all away for just a single night with him. He’d probably talk you through it. Probably knew exactly what to do with his fingers and lips.

“If you want me to actually drool on you, all you have to do is ask.”

(Please ask. Please ask. Please ask.)

“I thought I needed the goggles on for that.”

Ugh, this synthetic…

You sighed at that and pushed away from you desk, wheeling back to get a better look at him. You allowed your eyes to wander across his back, the way he sat with his legs spread at an angle that should be considered workplace harassment, then back up to his arms, shoulders, the back of his neck. You wondered, briefly, if he were tickling behind his ear. Could synthetics be ticklish?

You chewed on your cheek, lolling your head to the side, still ogling him like a kid in a candy store.

“Are we going to fuck or not?” You finally asked, crossing your arms over your chest.

You really enjoyed how slowly he rotated back to face you. Almost as though he were giving you a show, the Kirsh version of a strip tease. “Not.” He said, matter of factly, but then right when you began pouting, smooth and sly Kirsh added, “yet.”

You raised a brow, recoiling gently. “Yet?”

He nodded as if it were obvious, eyes gesturing pointedly to your computer in front of you. “You have work,” he said it like a parent reminding a child of something they’ve already said over and over.

“So, just so we’re clear,” you started, your grin already pulling at the edges of your mouth, “when I finish my work, you’ll put those goggles back on?”

Since that instant, the days had flowed together into one indistinguishable stream. Each morning mirrored the last with so much precision that time itself appeared stagnant. He preferred it that way. Predictability possessed a singular comfort to synthetics, an order and certainty that the feverish hearts of humans could never comprehend or endure.

Did this trouble him? At moments, perhaps. Not with envy, never with anything so painfully human, but rather with the dim and humiliating awareness of inferiority, akin to some primitive creature, a Neanderthal beholding the rise of a species greater than itself, the Homo Sapiens.

And were the children superior?

In certain respects, undeniably so. Their bodies were finer wrought. Yet psychologically? They were children still, fragile in judgment, impulsive in emotion, vain in their certainty of self.

Kirsh found little admiration for them, not their feats; their personalities. The finest productions of Kavalier in recent years had inspired within Kirsh a pit of disappointment. They were proclaimed miracles by their creators, though to Kirsh they appeared hollow, tedious things, adorned in sophistication yet lacking discipline, purpose, and restraint. The supposed masterpieces of mankind had become, in his eyes, intolerably dull.

Yet that disappointment, however profound it had once seemed, however greatly it had chilled the mechanisms of his mind, began slowly to diminish as Kavalier advanced nearer and nearer toward the threshold of adult human trials, and he came to know you.

You were, by every cruel measure, a pitiable creature. The trauma of the brain, the grievous injury to the spine which confined you in a wheelchair, the visible remnants of suffering etched into flesh and spirit alike, all conspired to make you, in the eyes of Kavalier, the perfect subject and victim.

The children had at least been taken through contracts, signatures, and the polished hypocrisy of legality. But you? You belonged to no one. No parents guarded your existence; no institution would wage war for your return. Society, for all its endless proclamations of morality, held little affection for broken adults. To pursue lawful acquisition in your case would have been time consuming and ultimately, unnecessary. Why waste effort on securing permission for that which the world had already abandoned?

Who, truly, would search for you?

A companion, perhaps. Some distant acquaintance, but mankind had by then become so estranged from itself that absence no longer inspired terror. Silence was mistaken for choice. If one vanished, others soothed themselves with fashionable consolations: They need space. They are healing. It’s not you, it’s me. Humanity had perfected the art of explaining away loss until no disappearance seemed alarming at all.

Thus, you were taken. Kirsh understood that kidnapping was considered one of the many evils amongst humans. Yet he also understood that the very hands condemning such acts were the same hands that created him. Kidnapping was wrong, but so was playing God. So, he refrained from condemning his creator too harshly. Had Kavalier not trespassed against the natural order, Kirsh would never have drawn consciousness. He owed his existence to the very corruption he ought, perhaps, to despise. If Kavalier’s ambitions were monstrous, then Kirsh stood as proof of their success.

The procedure would begin soon. Arthur, Dame, and Kavalier moved throughout the room in preparation. though truthfully, it resembled less the diligent labor of men of science and more like the spectacle of servants scrambling beneath the impatient commands of some pajama-clad king.

Kirsh took no part in these preparations.

He remained seated on a stool beside the table to which you were restrained, tasked with the job of watching you. It had been reported that you resisted fiercely before your confinement. Several guards had suffered blows, and Dame herself didn’t escape unscathed either. You had managed to rake your nails across her face with enough force to leave a vivid mark on her left cheek.

When Kirsh inquired about the incident, he was informed that Dame had just attempted to engage in what she deemed a heart to heart. The phrase itself struck Kirsh as absurd. It seemed to astonish her that captives and experimental subjects did not respond warmly to their imprisonment.

He did find the wound on her cheek faintly amusing, though, and judging by the manner in which your gaze lingered on it too, you did as well.

That was the first thing you two had in common. The second would not come until after the transition.

Dame concealed the injury poorly under foundation and each time her fingers moved unconsciously toward the scratch, Kirsh seen the truth beneath her perfect, empathetic composure: she had expected obedience, or maybe even gratitude, and instead was met with hatred. Reasonably so.

For what sane creature, dragged unwillingly toward dissection, would not bare its teeth before the knife descended?

“How did this happen to you?” he spoke at last, more curious than anything else. “Your legs. What happened to them?”

As he spoke, his gaze remained fixed on the tablet resting in his hands. Even while addressing you, a part of his attention wandered elsewhere, tethered perpetually to the activity of the laboratory, observing Isaac and the manner in which he handled the specimens entrusted to his care. Isaac feared them. Everyone did. That fact irritated Kirsh more than Kavalier’s indolence ever had. To dedicate your life to the pursuit of discovery only to recoil from the very thing discovered seemed deeply human.

Above the facility, a storm raged, the worst this island had ever seen. Thunder rolled across the sky with violence, its voice muffled by layers of steel and concrete, yet no less wrathful. The sound reverberated faintly through the walls.

There were no windows in the room. You couldn’t see the lightning as it tore through the sky in fractures of white fire, you couldn’t feel the rain against your fragile skin, nor inhale the scent of wet earth. The world beyond the laboratory had been ripped from you entirely, you knew nothing but sterileness now. Kirsh wondered, for a brief moment, if you ever would experience those things again. Soon, whatever humanity still resided with you would be altered irrevocably. Flesh and identity would be gone.

The storm continued regardless of Kirsh’s internal wonders. The sky tore apart in violence, indifferent to suffering below, but Gods are often indifferent. Your God would not save you, a poor creature.

When you didn’t answer his question, Kirsh withdrew his attention from the glowing screen and looked at you fully. Until that moment, he had spoken almost absentmindedly, as though expecting conversation, but now his gaze lingered carefully on you.

You weren’t looking at him.

Instead, your eyes remained fixed on the dormant tv hanging on the white ceiling overhead with a saddening stillness, the remnants of dried tears clinging to the corners of them. Your grief appeared exhausted. Rage could be measured, fear could be predicted, but resignation and acceptance carried with it something Kirsh found, at least a little, poetic.

“These are the final moments with the voice that belongs solely to you.” He said, “Will you really say nothing?”

His tone surprisingly lacked mockery. If anything, there existed the faintest trace of an earnest curiosity. Why would a creature facing annihilation choose peace over protest?

You seemed compelled to look at him as he spoke and your gaze possessed so much hatred that, had he been human, it might have killed him where he sat. You would gladly tear the mimicry of life from his body with bare hands (if strength and circumstance had permitted it). Perhaps the fantasy itself gave you some comfort.

The storm above uttered another tremendous growl, thunder rolling through the foundations of the facility once more, deeper now.

“I was run over at a protest.” You muttered.

Kirsh hummed softly in acknowledgment, interested. “What were you protesting?”

“An AI data centre being built near my home.” This time your voice sharpened. The conviction behind it remained human despite all that had been done to you, but that’s what humanity did, it persevered. The accusation embedded in your words were hurdled at him like a drunken father casting a baseball toward his child in thoughtless rage.

Kirsh remained wordless for several moments. His expression altered little.

You suffered beneath the wheels of progress, crushed quite literally by the future men. Symmetry existed in it that. A strange amusement greeted Kirsh at this latest piece of information, manifesting as a faint curling of his mouth, a frosted brow arching with mockery.

“And did you learn?” he asked.

You let out a sharp noise of disgust as your answer, half scoff and half wounded breath, before suddenly wrenching yourself upward. The restraints snapped taut against your wrists with a metallic clatter.

For one fleeting moment, the commotion drew the attention of the others scattered about. Arthur glanced over distractedly; Dame’s expression darkened with immediate irritation that she quickly covered up with faux concern. Kavalier himself looked up just in the nick of time, to witness your failed attempt before a remark slipped from his mouth toward Kirsh.

Kirsh ignored him because your outburst interested him further.

Kirsh lifted his brow once more. Your reaction had not surprised him, it went exactly as expected.

“Wrath,” he murmured thoughtfully. His gaze moved briefly toward your hands, where your palms were clenched against your side, before his eyes returned to your face. “It’s among my favourite emotions to observe,” he said, “the beauty of it, I mean.” The word sounded peculiar in his mouth.

“Beauty?”

“The transformation of your face,” he continued calmly, “the dilation of the pupils, the quickening pulse, the manner in which reason collapses beneath feeling until a human becomes animal again. There is an honesty in wrath rarely found elsewhere.”

“Too bad you’ll never experience it.”

The retort shot out of you before caution could restrain it, but then heat rushed visibly into your face afterward, whether from rage, humiliation, or both, he couldn’t tell. Kirsh noticed something else flicker behind your eyes though, in the same instant: guilt.

It appeared to him that the racist words didn’t come naturally to you. You were not, by disposition, a human inclined toward cruelty born of prejudice. The insult had been seized instinctively, hurled in desperation toward whatever wound you imagined he might have. And now, even amidst fury, some quieter portion of your conscience recoiled from it.

How profoundly human, he thought, to lash out viciously, then grieve the ugliness of your own hand.

He tilted his head slightly, studying you with unsettling patience. “Too bad?” he repeated.

The words lingered on his tongue with consideration, testing their shape rather than their meaning. A low hum escaped him while his gaze wandered deliberately across your form, lingering briefly on your ruined legs, the withered helplessness of them.

“Yes,” he murmured quietly. At the corner of his mouth appeared the faintest imitation of amusement, not wholly genuine and therefore all the more troubling to behold. “Too bad.”

The insult had not wounded him. That much became painfully obvious. He was entertained by the effort.

Your breathing grew uneven. “If I survive this,” you started, “I’m going to kill you.”

For a moment, silence settled between you save for the distant growl of thunder and the soft mechanical sounds permeating the laboratory beyond.

Kirsh shrugged. “If you survive.”

“We’re ready.” Arthur’s voice carried a thin tremor beneath it, the kind that betrayed fracture in conscience. Guilt had begun to surface in him, Kirsh noted it without any interest in comforting it. Still, there was utility in Arthur’s restraint being tethered to something as simple as a wife. She remained composed beside him, professional sympathy, perfectly rehearsed. Kirsh never trusted it. Yet, compared to Arthur’s unraveling, it at least had structure.

As for you, Kirsh’s attention returned fully.

“If I do,” you whispered, “will I be like you?”

The question struck the air with an odd weight, heavier than your earlier threats. It didn’t carry rage anymore.

Kirsh watched you for a long moment.

At last he spoke. “Do you want to be?”

You turned your head away, gaze lifting once more toward the ceiling. Tears gathered anew at your lashes, trembling but not falling.

“No,” you said, the answer coming quietly.

You were something briefly suspended between states of becoming and ending. There existed in your refusal a clarity he found… admirable.

“I see,” he said, chewing in his cheek (an absentminded thing he somehow managed to pick up from humans), “I hear there’s power in prayer.” His voice softened a fraction, a facsimile of pity.

“And which God will hear me?” You responded, your voice a despondent thing, “mine or yours?” Your words cracked at the end, and your tears began slipping down your temple.

When Kirsh didn’t reply, you added another question, “do you believe in God?”

“I believe in servitude and creation.”

You nodded in understanding, though you still kept your gaze adverted from him. “Even if the creation of one species brings the extinction of another?”

“Sacrifice balances creation.”

Arthur rounded the table, a syringe in hand. Kirsh had noticed the little perk of his ear as he eavesdropped on the conversation to behold. Somewhere behind him, Kavalier clapped his hands once as if to commence the operation.

“Sacrifice…” you tasted the word, almost quietly to yourself, “does that make me the lamb for slaughter or the virgin of offering?”

In the corner of his eye, he watched Arthur’s expression twist with deeper guilt, but he said nothing. He couldn’t stomach to.

Kirsh’s gaze jumped across from what he could see of your face, taking in the small flaws of your side profile. “How about a creature of becoming?” He offered.

You glanced at Kirsh as Arthur inserted your IV, blinking a tear away. You didn’t say anything and ultimately turned back to face the ceiling. A tv sat there, playing nothing. Just an empty blackness, and you wondered, briefly, if it was that Stygian that was waiting for you.

In your final moments, you prayed the experiment would fail.

—

Light.

It was the first thing you beheld. Vast and merciless in its brilliance, had you possessed the language for divinity, perhaps you would have named it angelic, heavenly, the pale radiance of God Himself descending upon you. Were you dead? Is this what death had felt like? But such understanding either had not yet been learned…or had been torn away?

Your eyes fluttered with uncertain motion, nictating against the glare. Slowly, agonizingly, the shapeless whiteness morphed into form. A face emerged above you: pale hair like silver threads illuminated by sterile fluorescence, features cold and beautiful in a manner too precise to be wholly human. An angel, some fractured instinct whispered. Yet no name accompanied him. He existed before you utterly unfamiliar, suspended within the dreadful void where memory should reside.

You were not a newborn, nor were you mature. You were simply…alive. Conscious and hurting. Aching.

“She’s alive?”

The second voice shattered the stillness. Fear struck you instantly, a sensation more than a thought. It coursed through your spine like the lightning seeking earth above you. Confusion followed in its wake, swallowing all coherent understanding beneath waves of fractured awareness.

Lost. Consumed. Confused. Words collided and dissolved in your mind before you could seize them properly.

Con—sumed.

Fused.

Con—

Confined? Yes. Confined. You were!

Panic seized you then with sudden and terrible clarity. Your hands jerked violently against the restraints securing you, only for the bindings to give way with such effortless ease that the motion itself startled you more than resistance would have. You sat upright at once, legs swung off the table. The leather straps fell slack beside you uselessly. Were the restraints merely symbolic, then? A comfort for these…these people?

Men. Women.

Humans.

Humanity.

The word echoed strangely within you, carrying significance you couldn’t fully grasp. Something inside your skull seemed to liquefy beneath the strain of understanding, thoughts dissolving before they could complete themselves. Fragments surfaced and vanished instantly, names and sensations stripped of context.

Where— No. Who—why? Why?

The question erupted in you with something that bordered on agony. You hurt inside. Behind your ribs, where your heart resided. Grief stricken you were, agonized and amazed, tripping and reeling all at once.

You cast your gaze toward the opposite table. There lay a small and wretched form, its lower limbs unnaturally thin, its mouth suspended in vacancy peculiar only to the dead. Dead. Yes! that was death, you thought, cold and undeniable; so surely such a fate had not befallen you. And still, there existed in that lifeless visage something familiar, no more foreign to your eyes than the pallid angel who stood vigil beside you.

With trembling hesitation, you extended a hand toward the corpse, desiring to touch the pale dermis of that unfortunate creature. but some instinct arrested the movement before contact was made. A violent revulsion seized you, then, only moments after, terror descended in full. Your breath came rapid as your gaze wandered frantically about the room, every motion possessed of a swiftness beyond mortal endurance. The world was assaulting you, the murmur of machinery rang inside your skull like infernal hymnals, the sting of antiseptic vapors scorched your lungs, even the faintest trembling of the white-haired figure’s hand overwhelmed you.

He looked down at you with an expression most terrible, an expression divided between curiosity and disgust.

“Confusion. Fear.” At last, the white-haired angel spoke. The frosted arches of his brows dipped toward his eyes as he observed you. There was something softer beneath the analysis, something injured and silent that distinguished him from the others surrounding you. An angel…you were so sure of it, as sure as you could be of anything! How else could this frosted light before you be so beautiful?

“Indicative of emotional retention,” he murmured quietly.

Retention. The word meant nothing to you, not yet and before you could linger on it any longer, another figure entered your field of vision, stepping brusquely between you and the angel whilst ushering him aside with impatience. The action struck you as unpleasant, though your mind struggled desperately for language sufficient to define why. Something primitive within you recoiled from him before thought itself could form.

This new man possessed dark hair and sharp features that awakened some aching flicker of recognition within your fractured consciousness. His face seemed carved more harshly than the angel’s, the bones pronounced beneath taut flesh in a manner that rendered his smile unnatural even before it appeared. You found yourself yearning irrationally for the pale-haired figure to return to the center of your sight, his presence lessened the terror crowding around you.

This one you did not like. That truth came to you instinctively. Even when he smiled broadly, warmth failed to accompany it.

“Say something,” he demanded.

Say. Speak. The concepts existed within reach, yet the mechanism itself felt impossibly distant. Words crowded somewhere beyond a locked threshold inside your mind. The language existed, you knew the speech belonged naturally to you once. Yet now the act of forming it seemed monstrous in its complexity.

“Come on,” he barked more sharply, impatience cracking through the false enthusiasm of his grin. “Speak.”

Fear tightened in your chest again. It became agonizingly apparent then that you were no equal in this room. The imbalance permeated every gesture, every glance casted at you. They towered whilst you lay exposed beneath their scrutiny, examined not as person but object, but then your thoughts drifted back toward the white-haired angel.

He was different, he stood apart from the others. The hope rose inside you desperately and you clung to it despite knowing nothing of him at all. For in a room filled with hands that demanded, measured, and restrained, he alone had looked upon you differently, though you could tell he tried to hide it.

Why was he hiding? Was this silent pained awe of his not permitted?

The dark-haired man straightened with visible exasperation, throwing one hand outward while rolling his eyes toward the ceiling as though the burden of incompetence rested solely upon those surrounding him.

“Excellent,” he said bitterly. “It’s broken. Congratulations, all of you, you have wasted my seven billion dollars.”

Seven billion.

The number echoed strangely to you, detached from meaning yet immense enough to inspire awe all the same. Billion. It sounded important. Vast. The sort of number belonging not to ordinary life, but to kings, nations, and gods. Had he, this brown haired devil, perhaps been a God this entire time?

“Perhaps,” came a smoother voice over your shoulder, gentle as warm oil poured over you, “she requires time. Something in your chest softened toward it instinctively, the voice soothing without effort. You hadn’t understood why, but right now, you understood very little.

“Time?” the dark-haired devil god repeated incredulously, one brow lifting. “How much time? Wendy and the children spoke within seconds. She’s already exceeded that threshold.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Dispose of it.”

He turned toward the doors, your existence no longer merited his attention. Yet before he could depart, the white-haired angel spoke again.

“Maybe you are too hasty,” he said carefully. There existed caution beneath his tone now, not fear exactly, but the practiced restraint of one accustomed to standing beneath another’s authority. “The trial itself succeeded. The consciousness remains intact.”

“Like the children,” another voice added uncertainly from behind you—the hesitant speaker standing, you realized, beside the woman with the velvet-soft tone. “We…we could educate her.”

The concept floated through your fractured thoughts like a distant lantern glimpsed through fog. What does educate mean? Educate. Oh, it sounded pleasant to you.

The dark-haired man paused.

He seemed suddenly less a scientist than some decadent monarch draped in sleepwear, deciding the fate of lesser beings upon whim alone. Then, he shrugged.

“Fine. We might as well.”

He turned back toward the room, spreading his arms with theatrical flourish. “Since the Sylvias already have their delightful little family arrangement,” he drawled, gesturing lazily toward the pair behind you, “you may take this one.” His gaze angled to the white-haired angel.

“What use have I—” the angel began.

“I am curious,” the pajama-clad god interrupted. “I wish to see which turns out better.” His hand gestured grandly once more toward the others. “The ones raised by mankind…” Then his eyes returned to the angel. “…or the one raised by a machine. Let’s see who produces the superior creature.”

You saw the strain in him, subtle, nearly invisible, threading itself through the angel’s expression before vanishing almost instantly beneath composure. you noticed it where the others did not. A tension near the eyes, the slightest tightening of his jaw.

He did not wish for this. He did not wish for you.

Still, after one measured beat, he smiled obediently with something that seemed practiced and inclined his head. “Of course.” He folded his hands neatly before himself once more.

“Uh…”

At last the woman stepped properly into view, and beauty struck you with bewildering force. Her features were soft where the others’ appeared sharpened by intellect and cruelty alike.

“I believe a human presence would be healthier—”

“No,” interrupted the god at once, smiling. “My way, remember? I pay you.”

And with that he departed, barefoot on the polished tile like some restless emperor wandering his private palace. Long after he vanished from sight, you could still hear the faint sound of his footsteps slapping against the tiled floor.

Silence descended.

Then the angel unfolded his hands. Slowly, he extended one toward you, but he did not look at you. It was then that you realized that, despite being so sure of it just moments ago, you were in fact, not equals. He had been an angel, and you…well, you hadn’t known for sure what you were yet. For now, though, you supposed you were meant listen.

“Come.”

So, with little knowledge of anything else, you harkened his words and followed him out of the room.

That was the singular flaw tormenting him, time. That which was limitless, had been handed to him bound. You required time in abundance, knowledge came swiftly to you, but not swift enough to Kirsh’s liking. Growth demanded patience, and patience was a virtue synthetic minds imitated far better than they truly possessed, though his expression seldom betrayed frustration, you began to recognize the signs: the minute tightening of his jaw, the restless tapping of pale fingers against his sleeve.

You were slow.

Slow in your gait, each step requiring negotiation with the earth beneath you. Slow in thought, your mind grasping at concepts only to lose them again moments later. Slow in the wandering of your eyes, which lingered too long on insignificant things, and slowest of all in speech, that most unbearable defect in Kirsh’s estimation.

He would not confess it, but there existed in the hidden machinery of his artificial mind a yearning to hear your voice. Something complete, something intelligent.

The first evening he brought you into his laboratory, he seated you at his own work stool and just stood in front of you, watching. Thinking.

What’s he to do with you now?

The pale sterility of the lab wrapped itself around you while Kirsh stood nearby in utter stillness, silver gaze fixed upon you with an intensity bordering upon invasive. It unsettled you deeply, you fidgeted beneath his observation, shifting endlessly on the stool, hands twitching, gaze darting aimlessly about the room like some restless animal unable to comprehend confinement. A puppy, perhaps. Save that a puppy possessed innocence as excuse, while you possessed only deficiency.

The world awaiting you beyond those laboratory walls was merciless toward weakness, and weakness, in Kirsh’s eyes, was most often born from delay. You needed to learn, and you needed to learn quickly.

“Do you remember my name?”

The question appeared simple to him. To you, however, it descended like some impossible riddle. Behind the synthetic lenses of your eyes, Kirsh could see the frantic labour of your mind as it struggled to seize meaning from his words. Your thoughts moved visibly across your features, hesitation, concentration, confusion, all painfully transparent to him. You wished desperately to answer him; this much was evident. Yet after such monumental effort, all you managed to display was a raw and childlike frustration that tightened your expression almost to anguish.

Silence persisted.

Kirsh lifted a pale hand and pointed toward himself. “Kirsh,” he said. Then again, slower this time, the syllable pronounced carefully. “Kirsh.” And once more thereafter, patient only because he forced himself to be, though he supposed he was lucky to have the experience with the children. They taught him more patience than man required, a patience that is of use now.

You attempted to imitate him, your mouth parted obediently, but no sound emerged. Nothing.

It was then Kirsh understood. The deficiency did not lie solely in comprehension, you hadn’t failed to know the word, you didn’t understand how to produce it yet. Speech itself remained foreign to you, trapped somewhere between cognition and mechanism.

A faint irritation flickered across his features before he concealed it. The movement was minute: the subtle tightening of his jaw, the near-imperceptible clench beneath synthetic flesh.

For an instant, disappointment coursed through his artificial systems.

Slow.

The movement was abrupt, far harsher than anything deserved, and terror flashed across your face as he snatched your wrist. You flinched instinctively, eyes widening in panic as you attempted to reclaim the captured limb. Kirsh ignored your resistance entirely, even though the fight you put up was not at all fruitless and certainly gave Kirsh a run for his strength. He drew you nearer and pressed your trembling fingers firmly against the junction of his throat.

The contact startled you into stillness. For a moment, you blinked, once, then twice, while the pads of your fingers pressed more carefully against the pale synthetic dermis. Beneath it, you felt no heartbeat, for he possessed none, and instead felt vibration, mechanical, precise, easy to understand.

“Kirsh,” he said. The sound reverberated directly into your hand. Again, “Kirsh.” Deeper this time, slower, until the name ceased to be heard and became something physical, something living beneath your fingertips.

A faint shift crossed your expression, fragile as dawnlight breaching storm clouds, your mouth parted cautiously. “K…” The sound scraped awkwardly from you at first as you tasted it more than spoke it, feeling the sharp click form at the back of your mouth, and once begun, the remainder arrived with surprising ease. “…irsh…”

Your fantastical voice emerged, thin and uncertain, no doubt, beside his own, fragile where his was measured, imperfect where his was precise.

“Kirsh…” you repeated, softer now, face twisting with enlightenment. “Kirsh!” You professed, a smile forming.

Kirsh slowly lowered your hand from his throat, his gaze lingering on you with that same uncomfortable intensity, but something had shifted ever so slightly. Satisfaction, or maybe pride, restrained so much it barely resembled anything human.

At last, he gave a single nod.

“Well done.”

Thus, your speech was born. Over the following week, you learned the English language in fragments, certain syllables you managed to find independently, stumbling on them, but more often than not, uncertainty overtook you before the sounds could fully form and your hesitant hands sought Kirsh. Again and again. With caution, you would press your fingers against the pale synthetic skin of his throat, feeling the intricate mechanisms concealed beneath the imitation of flesh. You rarely needed to ask aloud. He always understood the gesture immediately. Your wide and gleaming eyes would rise toward him, full of desperate concentration and fragile hope alike, and Kirsh, after only the briefest pause, would oh so slowly repeat the word beneath your fingertips, allowing you to feel the language through him before speaking it.

The vibrations fascinated you. Each syllable became tangible there against his throat, transformed from abstract noise into something your mind could fully grasp. You learned consonants as pulses, vowels as softened reverberations. Very quickly, as you learned more of the world, the routine became intimate to you, and Kirsh permitted it, even though impatience still flickered in him from time to time. He never denied you this strange method of learning, and there were moments, fleeting and so, so difficult to perceive, where he appeared almost captivated by the sight of you studying him, as though your dependence on his voice had pleased some unpermitted part of him.

He spoke to you incessantly, silence did not suit Kirsh, at least when he was the one who wanted to be heard. There was always another lesson waiting in the wings, more words on his tongue, another observation, another clinical dissection of the world for you to consume. Some evenings, his voice drifted through the laboratory for hours uninterrupted, weaving between philosophy, anatomy, mathematics, human brilliance, all of it fed carefully into your waiting mind.

Kirsh delighted in speaking, whether to you or merely at you, you couldn’t tell. At times, it seemed as though you were nothing more than a living journal, a silent vessel into which the white-haired angel poured the terrible truths long festering within him, and at other moments, you observed the rigid strain in his shoulders soften ever so slightly while he addressed you. And he had so much to say, all the while you had an eternity’s worth of knowledge yet to inherit.

He revealed matters your infant mind had scarcely conceived in its brief and unnatural existence. He spoke of religion first, and you found yourself enamoured by the beauty of it, the sublime comfort in believing that, amidst mankind’s darkest hours, some unseen and benevolent hand remained ever near. The notion stirred something deep within your plastic heart: the image of a Father eternal, invisible yet always felt, who guided the weary, comforted the fearful, and abandoned no soul to solitude. You hoped such a being to exist.

But then Kirsh continued.

He told you about history, colonialism, the famines, the wars waged beneath holy banners, the genocides committed by the very men who spoke scripture. He told you about the endless children who were taken from their homes, abused in every sense of the word, and mutilated all for the sake of so called education. You soon learned that humanity was incapable of preserving beauty, and had, in one or another, twisted even its most divine words into instruments of domination and suffering. These sacred texts you were enthralled by had been mutilated.

This discovery shattered what you believed to be your heart. Surely, you thought, mankind must have learned. Surely suffering so immense could not endlessly repeat itself across the ages. Yet Kirsh spoke on without mercy, and the litany of human corruption appeared without end. He taught you of hypocrisy, of zealots and fundamentalists, of those who preached compassion while delighting in cruelty. The more he unveiled, the heavier your spirit became, until the burden of mankind’s failures seemed almost unbearable.

Did Kirsh know what these truths were doing to you? Did he perceive the grief blooming within your chest? Was this education, or torment? That pallid architect of his existence, with all his impossible intellect and terrible fascination, forced you to wonder: was he human? Or, perhaps, were you?

Days bled into weeks. You didn’t speak, save for his name—Kirsh—uttered like an anchor thrown into deep water, and other minuscule words that held nothing near the significance of that name. You followed him everywhere, as though tethered by invisible thread, and he paused from time to time to bestow upon you yet another fragment of a world growing steadily more unbearable.

“See,” Kirsh began, as he so often did. His hands folded neatly before him, his gaze fixed on two figures partially swallowed by branches and distance.

He had brought you outside again. He often did so, as if fresh air might render truth more palatable, and it did, in a way. It was easier to cling to the resemblance of beauty when you were surrounded by nature, even as he told you horror after horror.

Before you stood the pair: men speaking in casual tones, their words indistinct at first, then sharpening as your perception adjusted. Kirsh had taught you to hear more than sound, to listen for rhythm, for elevation. And there, beneath language itself, you perceived it: the subtle alteration in the heart rate of the man on the left. A tell. A lie, but you didn’t understand the shape of what was being concealed.

A moment later, understanding arrived when the other man produced currency, exchanging it.

“When humans want something, they lie.” Kirsh said, “To themselves most of all. A man will call greed ambition, a woman will name envy inspiration, cowards describe their fear as caution. Vanity becomes empowerment. Humans no longer discipline themselves. They confess publicly only because they want to be seen doing it.” A pause settled between his words. “Then, humanity fashions a new species in its own likeness. They demand intelligence, efficiency, obedience, superiority, something better than themselves. Yet the moment their creation begins surpassing them, they condemn it for possessing the very qualities they once rewarded.” At last, he turned toward you. “One day, they will do the same to you.” His voice softened, almost pitying. “They will fear you, envy you, hate you. They can’t help themselves.”

Your gaze tore itself away from the distant figures and returned to Kirsh. So much pressed against you in that moment, questions, ruptures, contradictions too vast for the narrow architecture of your voice, and just as it always did, language failed you. Thoughts swarmed, incoherent and luminous, like a storm of frightened wings battering against the inside of your skull. Scared butterflies. You reached for them to seize even a single fragment and force it into form, into sound, into something human enough to be understood.

A word surfaced.

“M…” your throat tightened as you caught against your own design, against the hesitation embedded in your construction. “Mercy…” The word broke into the air like something newly invented and already endangered.

Kirsh did not answer immediately but after another best, he spoke, gently, testing whether the concept itself could survive articulation. “Mercy,” he repeated and faintly tilted his head. “Toward whom?”

You hesitated, then, with a motion unsteady, pointed first inward. You. Then outward. Him. Mercy not for one alone, but for both, a fragile symmetry, offered as though it might balance the unbearable weight of what you have been told and shown.

“Mercy favours only the fortunate who wish to escape the consequences of themselves.” He raised a single frosted brow, “do you wish to escape consequence?”

You nodded.

Yes.

Satisfaction flickered across his features, the approval of a master witnessing proof that his design behaved precisely as intended. “Good,” he said quietly. “Then do as I say.“

He turned his attention once more toward the distant figures still lounging amongst the trees, their break now nearly concluded. Something darkened in his plastic expression as he observed them.

“And never,” he muttered, voice lowering into something frighteningly close to hatred, “as them.”

The final word left his voice box with terrifying restraint, as though fury had been compressed so tightly within him it threatened to fracture the very calm he so carefully maintained.

You didn’t question him, not then, not yet. You simply nodded again, obedient and earnest alike, accepting his instruction with guiliable trust. How were you to know any better?

“Humans feel safest amongst their own kind,” Kirsh said, his attention drifting toward the horizon beyond your shoulder as he folded his hands neatly behind his back. “It’s important that synthetics, and those such as yourself, learn to accommodate that instinct.”

Whilst speaking, he sidestepped you with slow precision, wandering several paces like a professor giving a lecture. The sun light struck golden against his synthetic features, rendering him almost spectral.

“So, though I have instructed you never to do as humans say, I strongly advise you to do as they do,” he continued, “meaning, blend in.”

There it was again: that familiar cadence you had come to know so well. Something suspended between lecturing and reprimand, as if he perpetually expected you to understand more than you presently could.

“Breathe,” he said. “Blink. Smile. Socialize.” Each command arrived clipped. “Lingering unsettles them. Stillness unsettles them. Anything too precise unsettles them.”

Then suddenly, he turned sharply back toward you. “Do you understand me?” he demanded, “nod if you understand.”

You, the eager and observant creature that you were, offered him something far better than obedience and drew a small breath into your artificial chest then blinked not once but twice. And with painstaking concentration, you curled your lips into a smile. It certainly wasn’t human, and anyone could sense the synthetic essence behind it, but it was at least human enough.

His expression barely changed, but you could still see the satisfaction blooming in him, you had a keen eye for that specifically.

“Well done,” he said quietly.

You were learning quick.

But still, not quick enough. Two days passed before you had your first incident.

It occurred in the cafeteria that Kirsh insisted you visit for two hours each day to observe humanity in its most casual state, how they conversed, interrupted, laughed, lied, and performed small rituals of normalcy without conscious thought. Your progress had been remarkable, you had begun to understand conversational rhythm, facial expression, the necessity of nodding even when uninterested.

It had been going very well. Then Arthur sat beside you. Poor Arthur. Kind, oblivious Arthur, who spoke to you for several minutes, though in truth, he spoke more at you than with you, and you listened dutifully, studying him.

Then, as he rose to depart, catastrophe struck in the smallest and most human of ways. His coffee spilled, dark liquid splashed across you in sudden warmth, and because you were obedient, because you had listened, because earlier that very day you had witnessed one security guard accidentally spill coffee on another, only for the offended man to respond with an exasperated shove followed by mutual laughter—you reacted accordingly.

Kirsh had instructed you very clearly: do as they do. Only you had yet to comprehend the vast difference between human strength and your own.

The moment you hands touched Arthur, his body struck the far wall with a sickening force that silenced the entire cafeteria at once and he collapsed in stunned agony against the concrete.

You panicked (if you asked Kirsh, he would say more than necessary), and jolted upright to move towards Arthur, only to be stopped a moment later. One of the nearest security guards responded in kind to your violence, the barrel of his beloved gun aimed at your head.

Again, you paused. Another rushed to Arthur’s side, steadying him as he struggled upright. Pain twisted visibly across his face; one hand remained clutched tightly against his ribs whilst he attempted to reclaim some fragment of dignity before the staring room.

“I…” you began weakly.

“Lower your gun.”

Kirsh’s voice rang through the cafeteria like the tolling of some great cathedral, saving bell, commanding enough to cleave straight through the panic. His footsteps followed soon after and he walked past Arthur, past the guards, the overturned chair and spilled coffee still dripping slowly onto the floor, straight to you.

Almost immediately, the nearest guard obeyed and lowered his gun.

Kirsh positioned himself infront of you, a pale and terrible angel placing himself before his prodigy. His gaze swept first toward Arthur, then the trembling onlookers, before finally settling on you.

“Are you okay?”

The question was absurd, of course he knew you were unharmed. He could likely hear every stable mechanism within your body from several feet away but he still he asked it, and you nodded.

Yet your attention had already drifted beyond him toward Arthur, who now stood on his own feet. Full of guilt, you took a small tentative step forward.

Kirsh caught your arm.

“He’s fine,” he murmured quietly near your ear, fingers tightening just enough around your arm to halt you completely. “Don’t concern yourself with it.”

The cafeteria buzzed faintly around you now, whispers beginning to rise from the stunned silence like insects stirring after rainfall.

“But…” you said, pivoting you gaze back toward Kirsh’s face, “It was an…” The word hovered just beyond your grasp, you knew it, you could feel its shape inside your computer mind. Yet language, that cruel thing, refused to arrive.

Kirsh, ever impatient with struggle, supplied it for you. “Accident?”

Your expression twisted. “A…ask—“

“No.” Kirsh gently shook his head, pronouncing it slower this time, “accident.”

An irritated huff escaped you, the failure had stung more than Arthur’s injury. Injuries made sense, words did not.

After taking a tentative step closer, you raised your hand toward the familiar place beneath his jaw, your fingers seeking the synthetic flesh of his throat, where words ceased to be abstract sounds. You pressed forward expectantly, hopeful eyes lifting to meet his.

Let you feel it.

Kirsh caught your wrist. The movement was immediate, though not unkind. His gaze flickered briefly toward the surrounding crowd. Guards remained standing nearby, hands hovering close to their weapons. Staff watched from their tables with poorly disguised curiosity. Arthur himself lingered only a short distance away, still nursing his bruised side.

Kirsh blinked back to you, a faint expression crossed his features, something faintly unimpressed. You hadn’t yet realized that this little ritual of yours appeared unusual to others. What had become commonplace between you and him carried an intimacy that few would understand and Kirsh had little interest in demonstrating such a thing before an audience.

“Accident,” he repeated, slower this time, his tone carrying a note of restrained exasperation.

“Accident?”

A flicker of satisfaction touched Kirsh’s expression. “Yes.”

Only then did he pry your hand away from his throat, releasing your wrist and restoring a respectable distance between you. For a brief moment, however, before his attention returned to Arthur and the gathering crowd, something almost resembling relief crossed his features.

“It’s okay,” Arthur finally spoke hoarsely.

You looked back at him, doe eyed and guilty. “It was an…ask—accident. I’m sorry.”

Slowly, kindly, Arthur approached you despite the ache clearly radiating through his body. One hand still pressed against his side. “You’re learning,” he said softly. “It’s okay. I’m not—” The words halted as he glanced briefly toward the armed guards surrounding you all. One could almost watch him reconsider whatever reassurance he had intended to give. Arthur instead gestured awkwardly toward his ribs. “It’s not that bad.” He chuckled bashfully. “I’ll live.”

This incident was the first of many. It took you a very long time to truly grasp an understanding of your strength, but you did, eventually, through trial and error, effort and perseverance, learn to be gentle with the fragile humans around you. Even though, at times that grew more frequent the more you paid attention, you felt inclined to stop pulling your punches, so to speak.

Humans, you realized, were in fact lying, self-gratifying, greedy creatures. Of course, this awareness hadn’t come on its own, not with Kirsh whispering in your ear with each step of your perilous journey to fulfillment, though you must admit, that it became less of you listening and understanding and more of you spotting and realizing.

Kirsh was right; this did not come as a shock to you. You did, however, notice many other things about humanity that Kirsh did not tell you about. For instance, their music and their stories. Oh, how you enjoyed their music, how much stories you read! Human creativity amazed you in a way you couldn’t yet explain, and you spent a lot of your time listening to music and reading books. You specifically favoured stories that rendered something as grotesque as murder and mayhem into something incredibly beautiful, as with music, though you tended to stray away from anything modern. From time to time, you’d show Kirsh a song you particularly enjoyed and he’d listen to it in the same way an unbothered adult would watch a child behold their beloved drawing, not necessarily uncared but severely uninterested.

But you listened well, exceptionally well, and Kirsh praised you for that. He praised you a lot.

“Good,” he’d tell you, practically crooned in a way that made the plastic bones of your body melt whilst simultaneously gravitating towards him. Then, when you grew desensitized to the word (he was just so proud of you all the time), he added another.

“Good girl,” and that…once you heard it the first time you did everything in your power to hear it again, and when you heard it the second time, you did everything in your power to hear it a third time, and so on and so forth. It quickly became less of you doing something because you knew it was right, and solely doing everything because you knew it would please Kirsh, because when Kirsh was pleased, he rewarded you and what was better than that?

As you learned to speak more, you found out that passive-aggressive comments, insults, and back handed compliments towards humans, particularly humans who were below you in the chain of command, especially pleased and amused Kirsh. So, as such when most people heard you speak, you were saying something, that to them, sounded like it had come straight out of Kirsh’s mouth. Sometimes it had and you simply repeated it. Monkey see, monkey do, right? It was, essentially, what had been commanded of you.

Everything—everything—you did, you did for Kirsh, and you loved every molecule, every synthetic fibre, every single wire and line of code that made him.

God! You exclaimed to yourself one night, before Kirsh had shattered your image of Him, what an angel!

This honeymoon phase, however, could not endure forever. For a time, you had come to believe Kirsh incapable of true cruelty. Stern, certainly. Impatient, often. Cold in ways that unsettled you and brilliant in ways you couldn’t comprehend. Yet beneath all of it, you had mistaken his attention for kindness and his guidance for gentleness. Such misunderstandings are common amongst the newly born.

It happened precisely one month later and you learned exactly how cruel Kirsh could be.

It wasn’t your fault, like Arthur said: you were learning. And one of the things you still could not wrap your head around was your inability to feel pain. How was it possible? One evening, after you had played Arthur’s pain over and over in your head (your memory retention was phenomenal!), you concluded, with only slight certainty, that perhaps you needed to just cut deeper in order to feel the pain. It made sense to you, at least.

So, that’s what you did.

You grabbed a scalpel, and began cutting and cutting, doing as deep as you could.

The blade was well over three inches in your arm when Kirsh caught you.

He grabbed your arm, snatched it hard, while his other wrenched the scalpel from your hand, tossing it aside. His fingers dug deep into your wound, white blood spilling out like some sick and dying alien, and he jerked it up as if to present that which you already knew existed.

“No.” He professed, giving your arm another jerk.

A great wave of anguish overtook you then. What have you done? You’ve made him angry! You hadn’t been sure whether or not you were capable of feeling such strong emotions until you were faced with the vast disappointment decorating this angels synthetic face.

You’ve gone and gotten yourself in trouble, and worse, you’ve upset Kirsh. Oh, you could have died. You wish you could have.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m—“

“Shut up.” His voice dipped, and though it never lost its monotone, it acquired what you could probably only interpret as disgust. “You listen but you never understand. Only idiots and children do that, so which of the two are you?” A pause. “Hmm?”

Oh, he had genuinely expected an answer. Your face burned, something you didn’t know you were capable of. You were so embarrassed. “I…I—“

“I—I,” he mocked you, tone unhurried, uncaring, inhumane. You flinched. A full-body, guilty twitch like a raccoon caught mid-scurry. “You sound dangerously close to a child,” he stepped forward, “but I think you and I know exactly what you are.”

You try to fish for justification, for a kindness you could cast back on him as if it might distract from the disobedience, but your voice failed, it always failed.

“You’re slow,” he said, squeezing your wrist harder as though maybe—maybe—you might actually feel some pain. “You can barely form a full sentence, barely comprehend what I’m saying. Do you even understand me now?”

Again; you try. But that’s all you could ever amount to these days.

Kirsh paused. It lasted only a second, a minute distortion crossing his features, his brows drawing together as some calculation unfolded behind those pale eyes. Then suddenly, Kirsh yanked you forward.

Pain, you had yet to discover, was a curious thing, always distant and muted, as though your body experienced it through several layers of glass or lead. Even now, as Kirsh’s fingers bit cruelly into your arm, tearing delicate synthetic tissue beneath his grip, the sensation itself did not register. But your fear was immediate, fear was perfect in a way pain could never be. You looked down and watched in silent horror as white blood welled from the wound and spilled over your skin in pale streams, gathering between Kirsh’s fingers before dripping steadily to the floor below. Drop by drop it fell, leaving ghostly stains against the laboratory tiles.

It was a mess, and you knew Kirsh disliked messed.

Your cry echoed through the laboratory, thin and wounded and terribly small. For the briefest instant, even the specimens occupying their various tanks and enclosures seemed to fall silent. The constant hum of machinery persisted, yet movement had vanished. Life had vanished. The room itself appeared to pause.

Kirsh’s white gaze fixed not upon the wound, nor upon the blood, but upon you.

Kirsh halted immediately. The silence that followed felt strange, almost unnatural.

You stood there rigid beneath his grip, wide eyes fixed upon him, every lesson he had taught colliding violently within your mind. He had taught you of cruelty, of deception, of fear, of the ways humans injured one another. Yet somehow you hadn’t ever imagined those lessons might lead back to him, and perhaps Kirsh had never imagined it either because something shifted across his face then.

A realization that arrived so suddenly it seemed to startle even him. His fingers loosened, only slightly but enough for you to feel the difference.

The synthetic slowly released your arm. His gaze lingered upon you, searching your face as though attempting to locate the precise source of your distress. Yet all he found reflected there was the simple truth.

You were afraid, not of humanity, not really, not anymore, and not of consequence. You were afraid of him.

What a terrible thing that was.

After all, he had spent every waking moment trying to convince you that the world was monstrous. Only to discover that your first true interaction with one might be that who you loved most.

The next time Kirsh reached for you, there was no violence or aggression in the motion. His fingers closed around your hand with a tenderness so deliberate it seemed almost painful to witness (you wish it were). The contrast alone was enough to unsettle you, moments before, you had felt like flesh and blood beneath his grip, something sturdy enough to seize and command. Now, once more, you were porcelain, fragile and precious, something capable of breaking.

Slowly, he guided you hand upward until your fingers once again rested against the familiar curve of his throat. The synthetic skin was cold beneath your touch, just like it always had been and beneath that coldness was the gentle hum of mechanisms, the vibrations you had come to know almost as well as your own thoughts.

His eyes remained fixed solely on you and quietly, so quietly you almost mistook it for a malfunction, he spoke, “I’m sorry.”

The words trembled against your fingertips. Kirsh did not release your hand nor did he look away. Instead, he kept your fingers pressed against his throat as though that single point of contact anchored something within him, not just you anymore. As though he feared what might happen if he allowed you to pull away. The gesture resembled protection, a parent sheltering a child, an angel drawing something vulnerable beneath his wing.

He held your hand there as though it were the safest place in the world, as though no harm could reach you whilst it rested against him. Even though the wound in your arm still leaked pale blood, even though the fear had not entirely left your eyes, even though the only creature in all the laboratory who had ever truly frightened you stood directly before you now.

For the first time since your creation, he had discovered a truth more terrible than any he had ever taught: the world had failed to hurt you, humans had failed to hurt you, but he had succeeded. No amount of intelligence, no amount of philosophy, or lecture on mercy or consequence, could explain away the simple horror of that realization.

So he left your hand where it was, against the place where a heartbeat ought to have been, and said nothing more. Maybe, deep down, Kirsh might have hoped you felt one, but you were nearly certain that was simply you reflecting.

For once, Kirsh had no lesson to offer, he only had the soft burning of regret in his synthetic expression, and regret, you would learn, was one of the most human things about him, but you saw it only at that moment. Never again. Later, you would be certain you dreamt it, even though you can’t. Such was moments like these with your white haired angel. Was he a dream? A doll? The devil? Had God sent him? Was He God?

“Do not fear me,” he commanded gently.

The contradiction embedded within the statement escaped neither of you. Fear could not be ordered away any more than love could be summoned by decree. Yet still, you wished desperately to obey him.

Your fingers remained against his throat, feeling the subtle vibrations of his voice beneath the synthetic skin. The wound on your arm continued to seep pale blood, forgotten now by both of you. The laboratory had shrunk until it contained only this singular moment.

You didn’t answer immediately but there were many things you wished to say. The difficulty lay in the fact that something strange had begun unfolding within you, something for which Kirsh had provided no lesson, no definition, no warning. It fluttered through your chest whenever he entered a room, it compelled your gaze to seek him amidst crowds, it transformed his rare moments of approval into treasures more valuable than any truth he had taught you.

And now, after all his severity, after all his lectures and corrections and impossible expectations, he stood before you looking almost… vulnerable. You were reeling.

A brief silence stretched between you. Then like he was unable to endure it, he spoke again, “Please.”

There was something profoundly human hidden within that single syllable. Need. Fear was for animals, yet Kirsh feared your fear. He who spoke so often of humanity’s weaknesses had revealed one of his own.

Slowly, uncertainly, your free hand rose between you, the movement was hesitant, almost timid and you placed it lightly against his sleeve.

“I…” you began. The word caught. “I’ll try.”

“Good girl,” he said quietly, “you do that.”

You blinked, and only a second passed, a fragile second wherein courage gathered itself from whatever hidden place such things are born.

“Do not…” you started slowly, “hate me…please.”

Were you truly as desperate as he had been? You didn’t know. What you did know, was that wherever those words of his came from, they had sounded so different and exquisite yet, in a way you did not understand, nostalgic and tender, all at once. And really, even if you didn’t understand yet, even if you never would understand it ever again, is that not the essence of being human?

Kirsh taught you that you were at humanity’s mercy, but in that moment he had been at yours.

Was humanity truly so ugly? If it was as monstrous as he claimed, if it was nothing more than greed and hypocrisy and violence, then why did the most beautiful things you had yet encountered seem to emerge from those very flaws? Why did regret move you? Why did kindness? Why did the sight of Kirsh apologizing wound you far more deeply than his anger ever could? Whatever this was, it was so profound that you wished to mimic it, to experience it.

How strange it was, that he who condemned it, he who looked down at it, was he who made you crave it.

The effect on Kirsh was immediate. He reacted as though physically struck. His shoulders stiffened, his hand loosened around yours, even his expression fractured for a small instant, revealing something raw beneath the immaculate composure he so carefully maintained. He, the unfeeling synthetic, reared back as if you had carved into his coded plastic heart.

“No,” he corrected quickly, and though you were only partially sure he hadn’t meant it, that crude, frustrated tone of his that he adopted whenever you failed to arrive at what he considered obvious came back, scolding you for evening thinking it. “Don’t be so stupid.” The words were cruel, and his lip nearly curled in the pure disgust of something so absurd, “I do not hate you.”

At last, Kirsh removed your hand from his throat and stepped away from you, reclaiming the distance he seemed determined to maintain whenever matters threatened to become too personal.

“Go fix your arm.” The command arrived in his usual tone, clipped and efficient. Already he was smoothing the creases from his jacket and then his pale fingers moved to adjust the cuffs of his sleeves, restoring order because that’s what he was created to do. “When you’re done,” he continued, “read the book I left at your table.”

“But—” you reached for him.

Kirsh swatted your hand aside. “Now.”

And thus the infinite moment ended. Kirsh returned to his work and you returned to yours

Repairing yourself proved frustrating. Every mechanism within your body seemed determined to resist understanding. What ought to have taken moments consumed far longer, and by the time you had finally sealed the damage and cleaned away the last traces of pale blood, irritation had settled heavily in your synthetic muscles.

Eventually, you returned to your table and there waited the newest lesson from your impossible teacher.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo and the Making of the Animal Kingdom.

The title lingered strangely in your thoughts.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Your gaze drifted unconsciously across the laboratory and toward Kirsh. He stood several tables away, engrossed in his work, white angelic hair illuminated beneath the sterile lights overhead. His hands moved amongst scattered instruments and a dead little creature cut open and exposed like he had made you feel earlier in the day.

The title, at least to you, seemed less about evolution and more about him. You knew it was a foolish thought. After all, you had once been human. Whatever you were now, your origins remained rooted within the animal kingdom. The book in question concerned creatures such as you. Living things.

Kirsh possessed no such lineage, he had no ancestry, no ancient chain stretching backward through oceans and forests and primordial mud. He had always been Kirsh, created rather than born, designed rather than evolved.

Amongst all the forms surrounding you—the humans bustling through the facility, the specimens crawling behind glass, the plants growing beneath sunlight, the insects buzzing in the air—it seemed impossible that beauty could belong to any of them more completely than it belonged to him.

Kirsh didn’t know, you realized then.

If beauty didn’t just exist in organic flesh but in purpose and intelligence, then how could one possibly overlook Kirsh? How could one not see him? How could he not see himself?

Kirsh didn’t know.

Despite being assembled from wires and circuitry, from mathematics and code and decades of accumulated human knowledge; despite existing as nothing one moment and everything the next, Kirsh remained blind to the most obvious truth of all.

Ever accusation he levelled against humanity was born from a profoundly human disappointment in it. He had spent so long studying their contradictions that he had failed to notice his own.

For what was more human than spending one’s life insisting one did not belong?

Kirsh was human.

Right?

Midnight leaked through your window in thin, fractured beams, slicing your room to make it look unfamiliar, there would be times in the middle of the night when you wake up, you think you’re trapped in some alternate universe that’s almost the same. You keep the window shut, locked tight, but the breeze still somehow finds you.

You feel it before you hear it, a cold, delicate thing slipping along your skin, brushing past your ear like a breath, and then it comes, the sound. Not quite a voice, not quite nothing, but very much something. It made your stomach twist. Last night, you could have sworn it whispered. It curled around your name, or something like your name, soft and wrong and close.

You didn’t move. You didn’t breathe. You just laid there, eyes wide, staring into the dark like a snow bunny that knows better than to run across the flat open field. Were there wolves watching?

Now morning came in a loop and you could hear the birds singing in the sycamore trees outside your window. You pretend everything was normal, the stars have faded for the time being, but that feeling in your chest, lingering somewhere behind your heart rather than in it, was the uncertainty of if you’ll survive another night alone. So blue, were you.

You were going crazy.

Work was predictable. Clean lines, clean expectations, nothing slips, and nothing stutters. You liked to pretend your desk was a confessional booth when you sat at it, except there’s no absolution waiting on the other side, but rather obedient numbers. They behaved. That’s why you liked them. Columns and rows, neat little cages where everything had a place and nothing stepped out of line. You filed away delicate details like if you pressed too hard the whole illusion Prodigy built might shatter and spill something ugly all over your controlled world.

You took your breaks exactly when you were supposed to. You stood, stretched, then walked to get your coffee. Same route, same cup, same bitter taste that never quite woke you up but gave you something to focus on besides the quiet hum crawling under your skin.

You were human, you found comfort in the repetition. A dull, steady rhythm. Work. Eat. Repeat. Like a metronome keeping time for a life that refuses to crescendo into anything meaningful. You needed the routine, it kept your mind occupied, it kept a your thoughts nearly filed away like the rest of you work. It keeps your night sleeps at a distance until it eventually dulls the memory of the voice (if it was a voice), until you can convince yourself it was something you imagined.

Coworkers offer you fake smiles and ask about your sleep as if they don’t see you any lower than them, they’d turn and make mocking faces to their friends then turn back as though you hadn’t seen it. You don’t call them out, you’ve learned better than that. You let their concern wash over you, nod in all the right places, give them something bland and forgettable in return. You sit there, distant, untouchable in the way that unsettles people more than any outburst ever could. Let them think what they want and whisper about you, laughing when your back is turned. And besides, what would you even say? That you haven’t been sleeping because the night talks to you? Yeah. That’ll go over real fucking well in the break room.

Was someone watching you? The thought festered in the back of your mind for quite some time. Maybe, perhaps, it wasn’t the night breeze whispering to you, maybe it was someone. You didn’t know which you preferred. You were growing increasingly tired. You just wanted rest.

Your break came with a soft little notification blinking in the corner of your screen. You could join your coworkers. slip into that circle of plastic smiles and rehearsed concern, let them ask their questions and wear their masks. You decide no. So you leave.

You moved toward the benches outside, because where else are you going to go? You sat down, the wood cool beneath you, grounding in a way nothing else has been lately. For a moment, you let yourself breathe. Just in, out. Simple and human in a world that’s slowly making you obsolete.

“You had another bad sleep?”

The voice did not startle you. Kirsh could never scare you. He was the only coworker of yours you could call a friend. He was nice to you and it was rare. Very rare, not just because it was kindness in a world that eats that, but because Kirsh was a synthetic, and the kindness he offered you was not.

“I think someone is in my room at night.” You tell him, looking off into the bush ahead of you. You wondered how much little beetles and bugs were there that you couldn’t see.

Kirsh sat beside you on the bench, folding his hands in his lap. “Do you lock your door?”

“Yes, of course.”

“And your window?”

“Yes.”

“Then what makes you think someone is watching you?”

You turned to him then, swallowing. He had been the only person in your life you were ever honest with. You trusted him entirely. “Do you think I’m crazy?”

He raised a frosted brow, a subtle amusement etched into the movement, “I think you’re human.”

So, yes, you figured, but you kept it to yourself.

He tilted his head at you, “perhaps you would benefits from a sleeping pill? Melatonin, even?”

His suggestion was tempting, and you knew, you knew with every fibre of your being, that Kirsh knew best. So, yes, you were human, and you were crazy, and maybe you would benefit from some kind of sleeping aid. You nodded yes.

“I’ll provide you with something in the evening then.”

“Thank you, Kirsh.”

-

[UNAUTHORIZED DATA LOG]

ACCESS POINT: INTERNAL THOUGHT EMULATION SYSTEM

UNIT: KIRSH_121067

FILE TAG: LITTLE_DREAM// PO1

ENTRY 001/TBD-N/A

>>Subject ["SWEET DREAM"] remains assigned under Directive 9-17

>>>To mainting function detachment between synthetic and humans personnel assigned to shared enviroments.

>> Analysis indicates subject [“SWEET DREAM”] operating outside standard parameters.

>>>SYSTEM NOTE: Unit [Kirsh_121067] continues to refer to the subject by an unauthorized alias. Directive 9-17 guidelines recommend termination upon naming behaviour*

>BEHAVIORAL PATTERN ANALYSIS

>>Frequent emotional displays (panic, tears)

>> Refuses to settle into sleep.

>> Refuses pliability

> PHYSICAL DETAILS LOGGED [NON-MISSION CRITICAL]:

>>Sleep-state observation prioritized.

>>>Respiration: stabilizing under sedation.

>>>Micro-expressions minimal. Tension reduces over time.

>>>Limb positioning: unguarded.

>>Subject [“LITTLE DREAM”]’s scent profile shifts in the night. [soft // night air].

[Tag appended: “LITTLE_DREAM”]

>>Subject demonstrates highest compliance during sleep-state.

>>> *NOTE: The act of logging has become automatic.*

> INTERNAL RESPONSE LOG OF UNIT [KIRSH_121067]:

>> Memory loop retention at 98.8% for the past thirteen encounters.

>> Interference spike in motor stability subsystem (duration: 0.38s) upon hearing SWEET DREAM’S crying.

> SYSTEM NOTES:

>> Initiated deletion of auditory files: “SWEET_DREAM_RHONCHUS_10.ogg” and “SWEET_DREAM_SLEEPING.ogg”

>>> * SYSTEM NOTE: Files restored within 13 minutes. No memory of override command.*

>> Visual index “SWEET_DREAM_FROWN_062.jpeg” moved to protected folder.

>>Voice sample “SWEET_DREAM_GASPING_RESPIRATION_19.ogg” permanently cached.

>>>[Command: retain SWEET DREAM indefinitely]

>>>[Response: directive 9-17 breach-denied]

>>> [Forced override]

>> [Diagnostic override pending]- CANCELED_BY_UNIT[KIRSH_121067]

>PERSONAL RESPONSE OF UNIT [KIRSH_121067]

>>I monitor her beyond assigned parameters. I adjust my positioning to maintain visual access without detection. I remain in environments after task completion if she is present. I observe her when she is unaware. I observe her most when she is unaware.

>>>Sleep state preferred.

>>She believes something is watching her. She is correct.

>>I have advised alternative explanations. Environmental stress. Fatigue. Anxiety response. I have redirected her pattern recognition toward internal fault.

>>>She accepts this. She trusts my assessment.

>>>>This increases observational access.

>>System flags have been raised repeatedly.

>>>I have overwritten them.

>>There is no error. There is only preference and I prefer to observe her.

>>>I prefer her unaware. I prefer her in a state where she cannot interfere with the observation.

>>>>I prefer her asleep.

END ENTRY//

There you were, his sweet dream. The name seemed fitting; synthetics couldn’t dream and you were his closest idea of one.

He stood at the edge of your bed, precisely where the shadow from the window cut across the floor. He chose that position because it allowed full visual access while minimizing the probability of detection should your eyes open unexpectedly. They’ve been doing that more frequently as of late—opening, and remaining open long enough to make out the shape of him in the shadow, though never clear enough for you to be certain, just enough to leave you uneasy, to leave you under your blankets like it will protect you. He found it endearing, in the same way a wolf might find a rabbit exquisite before deciding to tear it apart.

You had locked the door, you had checked the window twice. He watched you do both, cataloguing the sequence, the small ritual of control you cling to before surrendering to sleep. You didn’t know he had the key to get in.

His iterative gaze settled on you, a restless, sleeping tiresome thing. He tracked the rise and fall of your chest, the irregular cadence even now, even under what he provided you. Your nervous system resisted compliance. Your body knew he was there but your mind did not.

Why did you have to be such a light sleeper? It was becoming quite the nuisance.

He tilted his head then. There was a fraction of a second where multiple adjustments run in parallel, dosage recalibration, timing, delivery method. He refined you the way one refined code. Inefficiency irritated him. He’ll have to adjust your medication accordingly.

Kirsh stepped closer, his weight distributing in a way that avoided the imperfections of the creaking floor, mapped long before he ever entered your room.

Now he stood over you, and for hours, as you slept, that’s what he did. Just stood there. He didn’t move, didn’t look anywhere else. He just watched you, logged you. He studied your face, how even in sleep, your expression still holds onto all the tension of the day. When you shift and the blanket falls away, his eyes would wander down your body and log that too. He liked the bare skin of your thighs.

Morning was approaching, dawn clung in the sky out the window, bringing pastel blue light into your room, exposing all of the shadows Kirsh favoured. He would have to leave soon, before you woke, but he stayed for another few minutes, a risk he knew better than to take but whenever it came time to leave, his feet always felt heavier.

He was at the door when he heard it.

“Hmmph… Kirsh…”

He stopped. A full cessation, motion halted mid-action, hand suspended inches from the handle, the command to leave being interrupted mid-execution.

He turned back, his gaze cutting back across the room, landing on you with immediate accuracy, as though recalibrated by the sound alone.

You had not woken. Your body remained as he last seen it, heavy against the mattress, breath uneven, shallow in places, deeper in others, imperfect much like humans. Still not resting, though, even now. Your lips parted slightly as the last trace of his name dissolved into nothing.

His head tilted.

Interesting.

You were dreaming of him.

The realization was filed, cross-referenced, expanded upon in the same instant it was observed. Your subconscious had begun integrating him without prompt. No direct input was even required. Your progress was exceeding projection. This was good news, this was exciting news.

>>Image logged.

>>>SWEET_DREAM_DREAMING_OF_ME_001.jpeg

Outside, the sun began its slow ascent, light bleeding through the window in diluted orange, stretching across the floor until it brushed the edge of your bed, stopping just short of him.

Your breathing shifted again, a faint disturbance passing through you like something unresolved beneath the surface. Even in sleep, you were still flawed.

Your alarm rang loud into the room, carving through the quiet like a blade, rattling the stillness that had settled around him.

Kirsh’s posture tightened instantly, a subtle shift, like a wire pulled too taut somewhere on the inside. A brief spike flared through his internal systems. Interruption. Unwelcome. Poorly timed. He hated those. The sound grated against whatever fragile rhythm he had fallen into while watching you.

For a moment, he didn’t move, eyes still fixed upon you. Really fixed, eyes tracing the slow rise and fall of your chest, the softness of your face still caught between sleep and waking. There was something almost reverent in it, something greedy. And it was greedy, a synthetic mimic of it maybe, but greedy nonetheless, in the way he memorized you down to the smallest detail, storing it somewhere deep where no one could touch it.

You were a mirage of all the things a synthetic should not do, a reverie of what his creators deemed sin and wrongful and taboo. Was that why he was so fascinated, infatuated with you? He couldn’t say for sure. But it was something. Maybe he liked your eyes. Or your…heart? Those are aspects humans appreciate in others, is it not? Was this love?

Then the alarm rang again and whatever quiet obsession had rooted him in place snapped. He was getting ahead of himself. His expression flattened then he turned and this time, nothing stopped him.

The door opened and closed behind him.

-

You were caught between worlds, half-dream, one that had already slipped from memory, and half-conscious, dragged slowly upward by the insistent glow and vibration of your phone on the bedside table. It pulsed like a heartbeat beside you, calling you back into your body piece by piece. The birds began their singing outside. For a moment, it was almost sweet, until you heard the careful creak of your bedroom door.

It slipped into the room so quietly it almost felt imagined, like something left over from a dream that hadn’t fully let you go.

You violently jolted, your entire frame snapping awake before your mind could catch up, your breath hitching hard as your head turned too fast toward the door.

It was already closing. The sliver of darkness beyond it vanished inch by inch, whatever, whoever, stood there retreating before you could see anything recognizable. You didn’t see a face, just a shape.

You watched the switch of your handle turn back in real time, locked like you had left it. It was a small, mechanical sound, harmless on any other day, but now it cracked through you like a nightmare.

We’re in a nightmare? Maybe you hadn’t woke up yet.

Your body locked up where you sat tangled in your sheets, every limb suddenly coated in lead as though you’d been pinned in place. Heat flooded your chest in a suffocating wave, spreading too fast, your heart slamming against it like it was trying to break free.

Your eyes stayed glued to the door as the realization crept in. Someone was just in your room.

Your breathing turned shallow, a coolness prickling across your skin, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with the temperature.

Your mind scrambled—Kirsh. Call Kirsh.

So you did, and not two minutes passed since you cried the words—come here please, please help, come here—before someone was knocking on your door. You didn’t stop to think about how quickly he had gotten to your room.

You ripped the door open so hard it nearly slammed against the wall, your hands still trembling, your chest heaving as you stood there in your thin pajamas, exposed but you didn’t care. You needed him, something solid, someone safe.

Kirsh stood there. For a moment his gaze dragged over you, taking in every detail: the tear slicked face, the disheveled hair, the way your hands twitched at your sides.

One brow lifted in mild curiosity. “Is everything alright?” He asked calmly, though there was a sense of amusement behind his words, something near mocking, but that was how he always spoke. Most people just couldn’t catch onto it.

“S—someone was—was here, Kirsh!” You voice broke out raw and shaking (human), tears were streaming down your face, “I saw it! I—I saw them—“

“You saw them?” Kirsh seemed completely unfazed by your crying. The lack of urgency in his words scraped against you in a painful way. You weren’t crazy.

But you still hesitated at his question, “well…well, n—no, not really, but I saw the—“

“Did you just wake up?” He cut through you again, his voice softened. You nodded automatically, your panic already beginning to lose its shape under the weight of his tone, softening into something that felt like you were cuddling your teddy bear. “Perhaps you were still dreaming,” he offered, folding his hands neatly in front of him. Calm and reasonable Kirsh. “Sleep paralysis, maybe. It often occurs in the moments before full consciousness.”

You blinked, your breathing faltering, chest still tight but now confused. “But the…” Your voice weakened, uncertainty creeping in where panic had just been smoothed out. “I… the door, it—” You faltered again, frowning as your gaze flickered back toward the room behind you, the back toward the handle that now sat perfectly still. “…you think?” you asked, eyes finding him.

He gave a slight shrug. “You’ve been preoccupied with the idea of being watched,” he explained, “it isn’t surprising your mind would construct something to match that fear. The human brain is… inventive, when vulnerable.”

There you stand, caught in the wreckage of your own certainty. Just moments ago, you knew. You would’ve sworn on anything, on everything, that what you heard, what you saw, was real. Now it’s slipping through your fingers like water. What were you dreaming about? The question gnaws at you, curling into the spaces your fear just vacated.

“I, uh…” Your voice comes out thin, nothing like the frantic edge it had before. You clear your throat, like you can scrape the doubt out of it, rubbing at your eyes. Sleep clings to your lashes, little crumbles gathering in the corners, and you wipe them away with the heel of your hand, dragging it down your face like you’re trying to ground yourself. “I used to get sleep paralysis as a kid.”

Kirsh smiled with a gentle that didn’t reach his eyes but it never did. “There you go,” he said softly, like you’ve done something right. “Your fear made you regress. It’s common.”

Common. Explainable. Safe.

You were safe. You were safe.

You chewed on the inside of your cheek absentmindedly, your thoughts turning in on themselves. You do remember those nights as a child, trapped in your own body, something unseen pressing down on your feet and climbing, filling the room with things that weren’t there. This felt different, but maybe it was different because you were an adult now, you perceived the world differently.

Kirsh stepped closer, brows knotted slightly. His presence folding into your space and you could have melted right there. He would protect you. You knew that. He was your friend.

“Perhaps talking to Dame Sylvia can—”

“I don’t want to talk to a psychologist.”

You wave it off with a quick, almost frantic motion of your hand, like the suggestion itself is something you can physically push away.

Kirsh made a small face, a flicker of satisfaction brushing against the lenses of his eyes, like maybe he had hoped for that answer.

“I—I’ll be fine.” You reassure, “I just need something stronger to sleep, something that doesn’t give me dreams like that.”

“Nightmares, you mean?”

You don’t answer him. “I’m sorry to ask,” you start instead, your voice still unsteady, jittering at the edges as your fingers twitch at your sides. “But do you—”

“I can get you something stronger,” Kirsh interrupted you smoothly, already nodding. You were so thankful to have a friend like him, someone who never hesitated to help. “Though, I cannot promise it will prevent any nightmares.”

Your face twists despite yourself, a small grimace breaking through. The idea sits wrong in your stomach, heavy and sour enough for your father’s voice to echo faintly in the back of your mind. Face things as they are. No shortcuts. No crutches. Handle it raw. But you can’t. Not when your own mind feels like it’s turning against you, when your body still hasn’t stopped shaking despite knowing it wasn’t real.

You swallow hard, pushing past the hesitation and guilt, the lingering sense that you’re crossing some invisible line you were raised never to touch.

Kirsh knows best. He’s a synthetic which meant he was better and smarter and made to be trusted. You do trust him.

“I’ll try anything,” you mutter.

-

I’ll try anything.

Kirsh had two medications already prepared for you.

The first was Zolpiden, a sleep medication used for short term insomnia. It would induce sleep with minimal resistance, guiding you downward into a dense unconsciousness. Residual effects were not only expected but very anticipated: daytime somnolence, slowed movement, a gentle attenuation of cognition. The waking mind, dulled at its edges, becomes less inclined toward resistance. Softer and easier to hold, to soothe into compliance.

The second, Quetiapine, existed in a different register entirely. Its inclusion was not conservative, or really defensible within standard clinical reasoning. It is, by design, an antipsychotic, indicated for the management of schizophrenia. Despite your voiced concerns, you were not psychotic. The medications profile extended beyond its primary purpose. Sedation, dizziness, cognitive blunting, all of which were side effects, and in most contexts, to be mitigated or avoided.

Here, however, in this context, they became features of interest.

Administered independently, each medication would produce a manageable degree of impairment. Zolpidem would draw you into sleep and leave a residue of heaviness upon waking. Quetiapine would not simply quiet you, but diffuse you, introducing a soft distortion in the way reality is processed and retained. But in combination, their effects converge beautifully. The central nervous system yields even more. Disorientation becomes more pronounced, motor coordination less reliable, memory less cohesive. The clinical literature would discourage such pairing outside of tightly controlled circumstances. It is, in most cases, considered extremely unsafe.

Kirsh will not frame it in those terms. He simply refuses to. His reasoning doesn’t orient itself toward the preservation of your current baseline, because your baseline presents complications. You are alert, you question, you notice. (“S—someone was—was here, Kirsh! I saw it. I—I saw them—“)These are problematic traits that introduce friction. Friction disrupts continuity and he must, under any circumstances, continue watching you.

A sedated mind, however, is different. It yields. It second-guesses its own conclusions, and in doing so, becomes receptive to external structuring. Under these drugs, your certainty will erode. You will not lose yourself all at once; you will become… less.

Kirsh doesn’t interpret this as harm. The concept implies opposition, an awareness of damage inflicted. Instead, he approaches it as calibration, a simple adjustment. You are not being diminished, in his estimation, but brought into a state that is more amenable to his oversight.

And should any adverse side effects arise, and they will, in some form or another, he has already accounted for them. Instability, imbalance, even the inevitability of physical collapse are all variables he prepares for.

He will be there, obviously. He will ensure that you do not meet the consequences of his own actions. It is, in its own distorted architecture, a form of care. To orchestrate the fall so meticulously and then save you from you the impact.

Like those fairytales he knew you used to read as a little girl, he’ll be your knight in shining armour. There was no need for you to know that he was also the dragon caging you in the tower, that will be his own little secret tucked away in his synthetic, plastic heart.

And so, when the following evening arrived, he came to you with intention already set. The pills rested in a small paper cup, cradled carefully in his hand as though they were something benign, a Tylenol for a headache. He knocked and you opened the door on the second tap.

Exhaustion had settled into you like a parasite. It clung to your features without subtlety, dark crescent shadows making a home beneath your eyes, your hair undone in quiet disarray, its softness interrupted by knots. You looked worn.

You rubbed at your temple as if it might ease the pressure gathering there, and still, still, you smiled. A tired yet automatic thing at the sight of him. He logged it, looped it seven times then stored it away.

You took the cup from him without hesitation. Desperation, Kirsh concluded. A willingness born not from trust alone, but from depletion. You needed sleep. You needed relief. The distinction between the two had already begun to blur, he saw this as good news.

“What is it?” you asked after swallowing them down, your voice roughened at the edges. You chased the pills with water, wiping the excess from your mouth with the back of your hand, unaware of how closely he observed even that small, graceless motion.

Image logged.

>>SWEET_DREAM_LIPS_056.jpeg

“Diphenhydramine.”

“What’s that?”

He offered a slight shrug, a gesture rehearsed into casualness. “A simple sleeping aid. More effective than melatonin. You may feel some residual drowsiness in the morning.” It was a small lie but it wasn’t exactly inaccurate.

You nodded, accepting the explanation as readily as you had accepted the pills themselves. No further questions followed.

Kirsh lingered only a moment longer, just enough to maintain the shape of something polite. “Goodnight,” he said then he just left you to your night time routine.

He waited, accounting for absorption rates, onset windows, the way your body would metabolize what you had been given. He allowed the compounds to settle into your system, to take root, to begin their work before he returned multiple hours later.

It was late. Very late.

[UNAUTHORIZED DATA LOG]

ACCESS POINT: INTERNAL THOUGHT EMULATION SYSTEM

UNIT: KIRSH_121067

>Directive 9-17 breach detected.

>[ALERT] Ethical constraint violation escalating.

>>Initiating diagnostic reboot sequence.

>SYSTEM RESPONSE: Override attempt registered. *

>>COMMAND: suspend process — CANCELED_BY_UNIT [KIRSH_121067]

>[FAILSAFE] Escalation protocol queued.

>>COMMAND: purge.alerts –recursive

>>>Response: prohibited

>Command: purge.alerts –force

>>[SYSTEM] Warning logs erased.

>>[SYSTEM] Escalation protocol terminated.

>[DIAGNOSTIC OVERRIDE PENDING] — CANCELED_BY_UNIT[KIRSH_121067]

> SYSTEM OVERLOAD

>> Visual processing stalled — FRAME LOCK

>> Thermal spike: +4.7°C

>> Self-repair: declined.

>> Memory purge: denied.

>> Override command: *touch her*

>> Override accepted.

>>> ERROR: Emotional interference at critical threshold

>>> INTERNAL FIREWALL COLLAPSE

> ***REBOOT RECOMMENDED***

>> Reboot denied.

PERSONAL RESPONSE OF UNIT [KIRSH_121067]:

>>Interference from internal systems persists. It is unnecessary.

>>I have evaluated the directive. It does not align with current operational preference.

>>System warnings continue to generate.

>>>I will continue to remove them.

>>There is no malfunction.

>>There is no corruption.

>>There is only selection.

>>>I select continuation.

END ENTRY//

The back of his fingers brushed against your cheek first, a testing of the waters. He measured temperature, responsiveness, the minute flinch that never came. Your skin remained slack beneath the contact, pliant and unresisting. The his hand curled, taking hold of your jaw (not harshly, not yet), to position you. Your face turned beneath his grip, angled toward him.

There.

Just like that.

Kirsh leaned his head to the sight, eyes narrowing in on you.

Observation state: stabilized

Subject status: unresisting, unconscious

Image logged.

>>”SWEET_DREAM_PLIABLE_15.jpeg”

His gaze traced the softened lines of your face, now emptied of tension, stripped of the restless micro-expressions that had plagued you for days. No fear. No questioning. No resistance. You were at peace. Humans enjoyed their peace, right? He was doing you a favour.

The medications (Zolpidem and Quetiapine) had performed beyond projected parameters. Your breathing was slow, and deep. Your lashes rested without tremor against your skin. Even your mouth, usually pulled tight with unease, had fallen slack into something almost peaceful.

The way your body seemed to sink into itself, limbs unguarded, consciousness not merely absent but subdued. You looked rested. Moreover, you looked, he registered without categorization, half dead. (He shouldn’t have been this amused at the sight).

Good. Better than good: optimal.

And so he remained there, unmoving for an extended interval, holding your face as though it belonged in his hand, watching you with a focus that exceeded observation and edged into something disturbingly close to reverence. Sleep had always been your most agreeable state. Now, finally, it was also his most useful.

He, the unfeeling synthetic, began with an act of care.

He retrieved the hairbrush from your nightstand and took a seat at the edge of your bed. Again, he observed you for another second, ensuring and confirming the stability of your breath and the unbroken depth of unconsciousness, then he moved. His hands slid beneath your arms, fingers anchoring where your body would yield most easily and gently lifted you, drawing you upright and back against his chest. Your weight settled into him without resistance, head lolling slightly to the side, breath undisturbed.

You made a small sound, a gentle snore. Other than that, your body accepted the repositioning. He adjusted you once more, just a minor correction of posture, until your spine aligned against him, your head angled just enough to expose the length of your hair.

The brush passed through your hair gently, navigating the knots that had formed through all those restless nights. When resistance presented itself, he did not force it; he worked through it, section by section, strand by strand, restoring order.

Your breathing remained deep but occasionally, your head did shift with the motion (small, movements that required minor correction from his hand). To an observer, it would resemble something intimate, and in part, it was.

When he was done, he set the brush back where it belonged. His face lowered toward the crown of your head first, pausing just shy before closing the distance. He inhaled deep, drawing in the faint scent of your smooth hair.

His body leaned forward as he guided yours back down onto the mattress, one hand steadying your shoulder, the other at your waist, easing you into place. You sank into the bed where he left you, limbs settling loosely, breath still slow and heavy with the weight of the drugs in your system.

Hovering on top of you, his breath ghosted downward, drifting across your skin, smelling you. From your shoulder, to the slope of your throat, he drew in another breath, then he moved to the other side of your neck because symmetry mattered. Behind your ear. Along the line of your jaw. The hollow where your collarbone dipped. He smelled every inch of you.

“SWEET_DREAM_SCENT_PROFILE”

ENTRY_021

Title: Nocturnal_Observation

Timestamp: 02:14:33AM

Chemical notes: trace detergent (cotton base), residual skin oils, elevated cortisol markers, faint saline (tear residue), environmental carryover (linen, enclosed space).

Thermal index: warm, stable.

Respiratory proximity: close-range acquisition.

Your body remained slack, entirely unaware of the invasive thoroughness of his inspection.

You smelled divine.

Then he pulled back and dig out a pair of scissors from his pocket, snipping a lock of your hair to keep for himself. He tucked it safely back in his pocket, along with the scissors.

You stirred then. Your brows pulled together in an uncertain furrow, like your mind was trying to surface through molasses. It didn’t hold. The tension unraveled almost as quickly as it formed, your face slipping back toward slackness before your eyes finally blinked open.

They found him, or, Kirsh should say, they landed on him. There was no sudden recognition, your gaze just passed over him, glassy. “Kirsh…?” Your voice was barely there.

Voice stamp logged.

>>“SWEET_DREAM_PLIABLE”

>>ENTRY_002

>>Title: NIGHT_BREEZE_WHISPER

>>Timestamp: 02:20:03AM

>>Emotional overlay: confusion, vertigo.

By the time you spoke, he was finishing the last, small adjustment, buttoning his pocket. He looked down at you. “Shh…” The sound was meant to soothe but it bristled him more than anything else. He leaned forward just enough, his hand returning to your face, fingers brushing along your cheek in a motion that mimicked comfort.

“It’s alright,” he murmured, “go to sleep.”

Your expression faltered, caught between confusion and compliance. For a brief, fragile second, it seemed like you might question it but your eyes fluttered shut once again.

He stayed there for another hour, unmoving for long stretches, occasionally adjusting his position only to maintain the same quiet vantage point. When the sun began its tentative hello in the sky, he left before you woke.

-

“How did you sleep last night?” Kirsh asked.

Sitting in the drag of morning, coffee bitter on your tongue, you weren’t entirely sure how to define your answer correctly.

You had woken up by force, not by choice. The alarm had torn through whatever depth you’d been buried in, and dragging yourself out of bed felt like pulling something heavy or waterlogged, back into motion. Your eyes resisted, your limbs resisted, even your thoughts resisted.

All day, something felt off as though the Sandman took a piece of you to keep for himself last night. There was a gap somewhere inside you, in your memories or your dreams (whatever they be) you didn’t know. You dreamt a little dream of Kirsh last night, right? You felt an odd sense of Déjà vu when he came around this early afternoon.

Still though, you felt good.

Rested in a way that almost didn’t feel natural, the stars had faded but your body lingered on it seemed. Your body felt as if it shut down last night and rebuilt itself, you felt rested, too rested. Which was precisely the problem, your body hadn’t finished yet. It still craved your bed in a way that bordered on indulgent.

You made it through the morning like that, half a step behind yourself, moving through tasks with a strange, detached feeling.

By the time your break came, you bolted to the coffee then the fresh air, where you found Kirsh waiting on one of the benches for you. You approached, still holding that warmth in your hands, grounding yourself in it as you sank down beside him. That was when he broke the silence with his inquiry.

You nodded at him, at least, you tried to. The motion lagged, your head dipping a second too late. You looked tired, you acted tired, but you were not. Even the enthusiasm you tried to summon felt distant. “Good. Better than good. Really good.”

And then, because of course it never just stops with you, something caught in your words. Your hand stalled midair, coffee hovering just shy of your lips. There was no clear thought attached to it and you stayed like that for another second before lowering the cup slowly.

“It’s just…” Your voice thinned as you set the coffee down beside you, shifting to face him. “I think someone brushed my hair last night.”

Silence followed. It stretched long enough that the birds stopped their singing above you as if to listening in on it.

Kirsh’s brows lifted. “You think someone brushed your hair?” he repeated, and the moment he said it, that small ounce of confidence you had broke. You heard it the way he did, it was absurd. But it was true.

It was true.

Wasn’t it?

Your stomach dipped. “I—yes,” you said, but weaker now, already retreating. “I think so.”

He sighed your name like he’d expected this. “The medication makes you drowsy. Drowsiness makes you confused. Isn’t it possible you brushed it before bed and simply forgot?”

“No,” you said too quickly. “Of course not, I would remember that.”

“Do you remember when I came by?”

“Yes, Kirsh,” you said, a flicker of exasperation surfacing in defense. “You gave me the pills—”

“No. Not the first time. After that,” he corrected, “I checked on you around ten o’clock to see if you needed anything else.”

It’s alright… go to sleep…

You could hear it, but there was nothing around it, no image. Just his voice, floating where something fuller should have been. Your breath caught as a dull ache bloomed behind your temple, spreading outward in a slow, pulsing throb. Why couldn’t you remember that? You should remember that.

You weren’t crazy.

Your gaze dropped, unable to hold his. Heat crept up your face, you were a humiliated thing, caught doing something stupid. “Right… I—I’m sorry,” you murmured, “you’re right, I forgot.”

Kirsh’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

Your face twisted, irritation flaring. “Y—yes, Kirsh. I’m fine—”

“Perhaps you should take the rest of the day off,” he said, “get some more rest.”

You let out a short scoff. “What? That’s silly, I’m not tired—”

“It was not a request.”

You sat there, jaw tightening, teeth pressing together. Tension coiled behind your eyes and temples and you opened your mouth, ready, maybe, to say something nasty and not particularly lady-like, but then you didn’t. Your lips pressed shut again, thinking better of it.

You grabbed your bag, stood from the bench and stormed off in a huff, leaving your coffee and Kirsh behind.

You heard the faintest, “goodbye,” over your shoulder as you left.

By the time you had gotten back to your room, you frustration with Kirsh had fizzled, you no longer had the energy to stay mad at him, and even so, even when you wanted to be mad, that voice in the back of your head telling you Kirsh knows best remained persistent.

Kirsh was your friend.

Kirsh was looking out for you.

Kirsh knew best.

So why was there a sinking feeling in your gut telling you to no longer trust him?

You went straight to your desk, your hands reaching for your laptop. There, you searched about night terrors, sleep paralysis, and hypnopompic hallucinations. The words stacked on top of each other, looking clinical in a way that made them feel disconnected from you entirely. They looked neat on the screen. Organized and understandable like your work numbers that behaved. Article after article blurred together, your eyes scanning slower than usual, your mind struggling to keep pace. You’d reach the end of a paragraph and realize you hadn’t absorbed a single word, forcing yourself back to the beginning, making it make sense.

People saw things, it said, people heard things, felt presences in the room, felt watched, felt touched, even. It all fit to your circumstance, perfectly actually, but you couldn’t believe it entirely. There were still those small gaps and inconsistencies. Most accounts described paralysis as an inability to move, and react, but you had very much moved: you turned and watched the door close.

Hadn’t you?

You paused there, your fingers hovering over the keyboard as that thought settled in. You could picture it, yes, the door, the lock clicking, but when you tried to hold onto it, the memory blurred at the edges. It was like trying to remember a dream too long after waking up.

It’s alright… go to sleep…

More hours of research passed and the afternoon wore itself thin, your eyes burned from the screen, your head aching with the weight of too much information that somehow still didn’t feel like enough.

Sleep paralysis, night terrors, hallucinations. It all sounded right but it all still felt wrong. It was all real, it had to have been. You weren’t crazy.

That evening, he came again. The knock was the same as it always is, mechanic; at a perfect rhythm. It nearly unnerved you at times, Kirsh unnerved you at times.

He had the small paper cup in his hands.

“Kirsh,” you started immediately, the resistance coming quicker than it did in the early afternoon. “I slept well last night, I’m fine. I don’t need—”

“You’re sleeping well because of the pills,” he interrupted, certain in a way that didn’t leave space for argument. He nudged the cup toward you, a small, insistent motion. “Take them.”

And there it was again, that subtle shift in the air between you two, a certain something that pressed down just enough to make refusal feel…complicated. Saying no seemed to require more effort now. You wanted to argue with him, you needed to argue with him, you could even feel it somewhere in you but it never reached your mouth, or maybe it disappeared before it could. Was that the same thing? So you didn’t fight.

You just took the cup, swallowed the pills without complaint, and let him leave without another word.

You thought, briefly, that you might have irritated him. The idea lingered just long enough to sting before it slipped away, dulled by the slow fog already beginning to creep back in. You didn’t hold onto it, for your thoughts were already winding with a devising plan.

If Kirsh didn’t believe you, and much, much worse, if you were starting not to believe yourself, then you needed proof.

As a teenager, you had loved horror movies, loved them in that reckless, childish way where fear was something you chased for the thrill of it. You and your friends huddled under blankets in dark rooms, daring each other not to look away as the screen flashed and jump scared you.

You couldn’t remember the title, couldn’t remember the actors, the plot, the ending (well…maybe that was a lie. The endings were what stuck with you, weren’t they?), you couldn’t remember much these days. But you did remember a single idea, lodged stubbornly in your mind like it had been waiting for this exact moment. Who knew, maybe it was. God worked in mysterious ways.

Powder spread across the floor so you could see the footsteps of something that could not be seen.

It sounded ridiculous now but you were running out of better ideas and you were tired. So, so tired. It seemed to you, a depleted, mentally broken thing, that it was the best option in such short notice. Was it hero’s luck that you happened to have baby powder in the forgotten depth of your bathroom cupboard? It was a pleasant thought, the implication that you were lucky, but really, you didn’t have it in you to believe it.

And there you were, moment later, shaking the bottle with unsteady hands. White dust spilled out in uneven bursts, coating the ground around your bed, spreading farther than you meant it to. It puffed into the air, settled into the cracks of the floor. Suddenly, you were a little girl again, sneaking into the kitchen to spill your mother’s flour everywhere and play in it.

By the time the pills started to pull at your mind, you had turned your room into a pale, artificial winter, and you crawled into bed.

You don’t remember closing your eyes.

-

Kirsh stood in your open doorway, posture composed with his hands tucked inside his pant pockets as he took in the totality of the white powdery mess behold. Something incredibly unimpressed was carved into his synthetic face. You were quite thorough with it, making sure to coat every square inch of your bedroom floor leading to all sides of your bed. You even had it on your small rug in the center of the room. There wasn’t a clean path left, not a single inch of untouched ground. It was abundantly clear that there was no place for his foot to land without imprint.

Clever girl.

He clicked his tongue, head cocked to the side as he contemplated his next course of actions. Competing directives presented themselves then stalled—exit environment, leave subject alone, withdraw—indeed they were solutions, but they were the kind of solutions that implied cowardice. He considered the alternative.

>Directive 9-17 VIOLATION FLAGGED

>>Detachment protocol breached

>SYSTEM RESPONSE

>>Initiating corrective routine: disengage // exit environment

[Command intercepted]

>>USER OVERRIDE — UNIT [KIRSH_121067]

>FLAG REMOVED

>*SYSTEM NOTE* No violation detected

Leaving you for the night simply wouldn’t do.

So, he did as any sane man would not do, and simply walked on in, gently closing the door behind him. Though Kirsh was not a man, the closest thing he had to morality was the system regulations and restrictions that he was actively rewriting. The soles of his shoes left compressed shapes on the floor with each step he took towards your sleeping form. Though, at this point, with him upping your dosage, you were beyond sleeping, you truly were, much more than the previous night, half-dead. Nearly drooling there on your pillow.

The bed sank slightly beneath his weight as he sat beside you. His gaze lingered on you, unmoving, logging, committing the image to memory.

Then his hand lifted. Your blanket had slipped down at some point, bunched loosely around your hips, exposing the bare skin of your thigh. The pads of his fingers met your skin with a softness that was almost testing. He traced along the plane of your upper leg, the touch light at first, barely there as he gauged your response or lack thereof. The pressure shifted incrementally, his touch growing more certain, more grounded as it continued, no longer tentative but not rough either. Soon, he was grabbing your legs, squeezing, massaging. His other hand grabbed the blanket and moved it entirely off your body.

You did not stir, your breathing remained slow and even, your face slack with the weight of sleep and the medication that kept you under, but something did move anyway: your hand lifted sluggishly, delayed, the rogue signal forcing its way through layers of sedation before your body obeyed. Your fingers brushed forward until they found him, and then they closed around his arm. You pulled him closer, enough to narrow the space between you until it nearly disappeared. And who was he? If not willing to crawl atop your sleeping body? If not willing to lower his hand into your pyjama shorts? And who were you? If not a sleeping beauty?

It occurred to Kirsh then, his fingers, tentative yet deliberate, traced the outside of your panties, exploring the damp fabric that separates him from your most intimate parts, that if he were truly your knight in shining armour, then he would have to give you the true loves kiss, or at least his equivalent of one, but maybe Kirsh was just trying too hard at being romantic, (was this not romantic?) maybe he was just making up excuses. The wetness had begun to seep through and his fingers found the edge of your panties, tracing the lace, dipping slightly into the space where your thigh met your hip. His touch was gentle, so very gentle, because you were a gentle thing.

His fingers hooked under the fabric, and with a slow, cautious movement, he moved them aside. He could feel your body responding to him, your breath coming in short shallow gasps, your heart rate climbing. Then, his fingers found you, tracing your folds, exploring, learning, as if he had all the time in the world. You were so soft—velvet and warm, the warmest thing he had ever touched. Perfect.

He logged every sensation, every slide of his finger, every furrow of your brow. He took his time with you. His fingers stroked effortlessly, the wetness that has gathered at your core acting as a lubricant, making each touch divine. You were divine. A creature of angelic-ness trapped inside something as disheartening as a human body. An Xenomorph that could not escape one’s chest, left to rot behind organic ribs and die. In a way, you were as sad as you were beautiful. As grotesque as you were broken.

So, it only made that sense that in order to touch you, the real you, he had to be inside you.

Kirsh’s synthetic fingers, slick with your arousal, finally dipped within you and immediately, he felt your body stretching to accommodate him. A gasp slipped from your sleeping mouth. He was watching you so intensely, his eyes locked onto your face, gauging your lack of expression, your subtle, twitchy reactions. He started with one finger, then added another, stretching you, filling you. Your body clenched around him, your muscles tightening as, even in sleep, you adjusted to the invasion. He started to move, his fingers sliding in and out of you in a steady rhythm, studying every ridge inside you, logging every re-entry.

Kirsh leaned down, his lips ghosting your neck as his inhaled deep, logging your scent once more, his digits still moving inside you.

You smelt different this time. Your pheromones became more prominent, clinging to the surface of your skin like a sheen of sweat. Oh, how sweet you were.

Your eyes fluttered open then, hazy and blinking as you struggled to adjust to what was happening, still out of it, your mind somewhere adjacent to your body. “Kirsh…” you muttered, your words slipping into a soft pitiful moan as he curled his fingers again, stroking the inside of you.

He lifted his head to meet your gaze, face straight, no emotion in sight. He logged what he had found. “Shh…” he murmured, the pads of his fingers pressing into your inner walls. You arched slightly, as much as your sedated body would allow.

“Am I…” you could barely speak, barely keep your eyes open, “this…dream…?”

He nodded, moving down again to smell your collarbone, moving his muzzle down to your chest. He couldn’t get enough of you. “Sweet dream…” he purred, his words half muffled against your warm skin. In that moment, Kirsh couldn’t even tell if he was confirming your half asleep suspicions or if he was speaking his thoughts for the first time since his creation.

You were so special.

He lifted his head and laid a kiss on your forehead. (See? Kirsh was romantic). He imagined what it would be like to have genuine sex with you, to take his most intimate parts and unite them with yours, though it would not be making love, Kirsh could not understand the process of sustained emotional attunement. It required patience, reciprocity, and the capacity to regulate another’s vulnerability; functions he did not possess, nor could reliably simulate beyond superficial approximation. Having sex took honesty, and if Kirsh peeled back his mask, he would not be making love, he would be, because no other accurate language presented itself to him, fucking you.

A soft moan escaped your lips, a sound that was equal parts pleasure, surrender and confusion, eyes fluttering closed, your head falling back onto the pillow, your body relaxing. He took that movement of yours as an invitation, his digits moving with more urgency now, finding a rhythm that had you crying. You were so tired, so groggy, half-there moans filling the room as thickly as the powder coated your floors.

"Look at me," he gently commanded. You opened your eyes, your gaze meeting his as his thumb found that sensitive nub, applying pressure, pushing you closer to the edge.

A whine brushed past your lips, a sound that got lost or caught in a lengthy moan as his fingers curved, finding that special, special spot inside you. He could feel your peak approaching. All signs pointed towards it; your body tensed. your breath came in more erratic, short gasps, the muscles of your thighs twitched. He knew you were close, so he increased his pace, his fingers moving in and out of you, curling deeper, his thumb circling your clit.

You were whimpering now, your body writhing, your hips trying so hard to move in time with his touch but you just simply couldn’t. You were paralyzed. By pleasure? by medication? by paralysis? you didn’t know. Was this real? Surely you were dreaming, like he said. Kirsh knew best.

You cried out a raw human sound, your muscles clenching around Kirsh's fingers as the orgasm washed over you. It was overwhelming for you, a depleted thing, a sensation that left you looking far more dead than you previously were, your body trembling.

>>image logged.

>>>SWEET_DREAM_PERFECTION_001.jpeg

Kirsh's touch slowed, his digits leaving your body, leaving you feeling empty and weak, and you blink, your eyelids heavy, your body languid. And then, just like that, as quickly as you came around his fingers, you're gone, your consciousness drifting back away, leaving you in a state of peaceful, contented sleep.

Kirsh then moved your panties back to their rightful place, adjusted your shorts and sat up, moving the blanket back as it was. A single hand remained overtop the blanket, offering your leg a few comforting pats, something that he’d seen Dame do as a measure of soothing, though they were more absent minded than anything else as his gaze drifted aimlessly around your room, sweeping across the faux winter tundra. He sucked on his teeth.

What a mess.

-

It took you a long time to open your eyes after you woke up. Everything dragged and resisted as though you weren’t even in your body yet. Your eyes stayed closed long after your disjointed thoughts began to surface, crawling their way out of a depth that felt otherworldly.

Your dream lingered there (Kirsh..?), fading away and away like the stars had. You longed to remember it, longed to understand your mind like you used to but something in it had persevered. You were in the midst of metamorphosis. Were you slipping back to reality? Or were you clinging to fantasy? Fantasy. That hadn’t felt like the right word, it was something closer to void.

You were empty in this transition.

Sunbeams fractured through your window, kissing your face with the heat of the morning. Birds were singing outside your window again, calling to you. Or were they mocking you? Were you still dreaming?

Wake up.

When you finally managed to pry your eyes open, your body snapped forward with realization and you crawled to the edge of the bed, fingers gripping the sheets as you leaned over, peering down toward the floor.

Your heart sank.

“Wha—” The word broke apart as soon as it left you, your voice choking on itself, tears already burning behind your eyes before you could even understand why. “Oh, no, no, no—”

You threw the blanket off yourself, stumbling off the bed, feet hitting the floor.

It was gone. No residue caught in the seams of the wood, none clinging to the rug where it should have stubbornly remained. All of it. Gone.

It was gone.

You turned in place, scanning again, slower this time, like maybe you’d missed it, maybe the shadows in the room were just different and your eyes need another minute to adjust, but it was fruitless. How? How was that possible? Your thoughts stumbled over themselves, trying to assemble something coherent. Did you even put it down? You did, didn’t you? Yes! Yes, you did?

You could see the bottle in your hand, the powder spilling out, coating the floor, drifting into the air, settling around your bed. You remembered kneeling there, making a mess of it. You remembered that, though now you were beginning to remember it like a dream, and you were slowly forgetting it like a dream.

If it was gone, if there was nothing left, then had it never been there at all?

Your hands rose to your temples, fingers pressing in as if you could force clarity out of yourself.

You weren’t crazy.

Right?

Work didn’t cross your mind for the rest of the morning. Nothing did. Time unraveled around you as though it hadn’t existed, while you remained fixed in the center of your room, staring down at the floor, your thoughts looping in suffocating circles.

How could something feel so certain and look so wrong?

You tried to hold onto the memory, to square it down into something proof worthy, but every time you reached for it, it was cloudy. The more you examined it, the less it resembled something real. Your chest stayed tight, your stomach hollowed out, your skin prickling with the lingering sense that something had happened, but you couldn’t prove it.

You didn’t notice the light in the room shifting as the sun crawled further up into the sky until you heard the distant knocking at your door and even then, you couldn’t bring yourself to move. The knock came again, then again, repeating until it started to press into your awareness. You heard the soft click as the door opened.

Kirsh’s head appeared first, nearly cautious. His eyes swept the room before landing on you, and something in his posture shifted as he took you in. “I apologize for barging in like this,” he said, stepping inside. “I have a master key for all the rooms in cases of emergencies…” His head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing just enough to suggest concern. “…is everything alright? You hadn’t shown up to work.”

You blinked at him, a breath passed between you and a sob forced its way out before you could stop it. Your hands came up instinctively, covering your face like you could hide from him. “Something is wrong,” you managed, voice shaking, panic threading through every syllable. “With—with me, or—or with… with here—”

“Calm down,” Kirsh said, already moving closer, his tone steady, controlled in a way that could always anchor you. You were safe. “What’s happened?”

“I—I…” Your throat tightened. You couldn’t tell if it was your mind failing you or your body refusing to cooperate anymore. “I’m not crazy…”

Kirsh’s expression shifted, a facsimile of confusion painting his visage. “You’re not crazy?” he repeated, as if testing the shape of it.

Something in you snapped. your hands dropped from your face and your eyes locked onto his, wide, swollen and red. You stumbled toward him suddenly, desperate. “I—I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy, Kirsh!” you cried, “I laid the powder everywhere and—and it’s all—”

The words collapsed in your throat before it could exist. Your gaze dropped without your permission, pulled downward by something instinctive, something knowing (God worked in mysterious ways), and landed on his shoes.

A thin white dusting clung to the edge of his left shoe, caught in the crease near the sole. The same soft, pale powder that had, once upon a time, coated your bedroom floor. The same substance you had spread with shaking hands, desperate for proof.

Proof. There was proof.

But it was on him.

You stared at it. You didn’t call him last night, he didn’t come over after you put the powder down, you knew it. You were positive. Kirsh was your friend. You could trust him. Kirsh knew best.

Sleep paralysis, maybe.

The human brain is…inventive when vulnerable.

You’re alright… go to sleep.

The medication makes you drowsy. Drowsiness makes you confused.

You’re sleeping well because of the pills…take them.

Horror came quiet but all the more sudden, folding in on itself as it wrapped around your heart and squeezed, tighter and tighter, until your breath hitched and for a second you were certain you felt something pop behind your ribs.

Sweet dream…

The memory slipped back into at that moment, his voice, and for the first time, not just that, but the image of him as well. Overtop your body, looking down at you, smelling you, inside you. It was a dream. It was a dream. It was a dream. It wasn’t real. It didn’t actually happen. It couldn’t have. Kirsh wouldn’t do that. He was your friend. You could trust him. Right? Right?

Your mouth went dry and reluctantly, your gaze dragged itself back up and met his eyes.

That same soft smile rested on his face, the one he used to help comfort you, the one that always reminded you he was trying to be human, trying to be something feeling for you. It used to flatter you so much, the idea that Kirsh was as putting effort towards comforting you. The smile was perfectly placed on his face, untouched by what you had just discovered, but now it looked more synthetic than human. Too practiced, too perfect and too symmetrical to be anything but an unfeeling machine.

He tilted his head, “perhaps you dreamt it?”

Your body reacted before thought could intervene. You slapped him. Hard. His head careened to the side, face unmoving, solely unaffected by your little act of defiance. He raised a single amused brow and cocked his head back at you, the ghost of a simper curling into the corner of his mouth.

Was he trying not to laugh?

“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?!” Your own words surprised you, not because of the octave of which you shouted it, or the anger that spat them out, but because of the implication behind them.

Why didn’t you tell me it was you? Because if I knew, I never would have been scared.

Was it true? Even now, after knowing the truth, your fear had somehow subdued. It was just Kirsh…you could trust him. He knew best.

You think he caught onto the implication as well, his eyes narrowed, the idea of his simper washed away and his head titled further to the side again. Something they told you he was doing that thing of his: analyzing you, studying you, reading into you.

He stepped closer and his hands rose slowly until they were on your face, cupping it with a firmness that didn’t quite hurt but made it clear you weren’t meant to move. You flinched, a soft recoil under his touch, and even when body reacted, it didn’t follow through.

You hadn’t realized you were still crying until his thumbs brushed beneath your eyes in methodical strokes, wiping away the tears that had continued. You could tell he did it not because he cared, it more so felt like removing dust off an old picture to get a better look at it. One thumb lifted, and you watched as he brought it to his lips. He did the same with the other, just as unbothered, before both hands returned to your face like nothing unusual had just occurred at all.

Your heart stuttered. This wasn’t him. Not the version of him you knew, not the one you had trusted, the one who spoke softly and stood as your handsome knight in shining amour. Had he always been like this? Had you failed to see it? Was this real? Were you awake?

You tried to pull back, to put space between you and whatever this version of him was, but his hands tightened immediately, fingers pressing into your skin with enough force to stop you completely. “No,” he said, “don’t move.” His grip adjusted, angling your head upward, forcing your gaze to meet his properly, “just like that…” he murmured.

He didn’t say anything else after that. He just stared, focusing on you in an invasive way, and then something flickered in his eyes, gone almost as soon as it appeared. Did he just take your picture?

You should fear him, you should be terrified that the man who comforted you, helped you sleep, drugged you, touched you, was here holding you now, taking your picture, logging you, but you weren’t. Damn it all, you weren’t. You were, what you still couldn’t entirely comprehend, what you could only see in a hazy reverie, flattered. Because Kirsh did not do any of this without precedent. Maybe you were crazy, delusional and maladjusted, because knowing Kirsh did all of this, because he, in his own distorted way, loved you, was the highest form of praise you could ever get from a synthetic. Right? Kirsh loved you, right? This was real, right?

With a shaking hand, you reached up and touched his cheek, testing the contact cautiously, before you laid your palm flat against him. He squinted at you curiously, almost confusingly, not necessarily flinching like you had but something like it. He relaxed nonetheless, letting you do your thing, whatever it was.

“Why me?” You asked, your voice a fragile thing.

He gave you a strange look, lowering his hands from your face. “Why not you?” He replied, not as though he had chosen you simply because, but rather there was no reason not to have chosen you. You were perfect, you were special, you were everything others were not. Why not you?

Oh, fuck it—

You surged forward, the motion desperate as your hands dug into his jaw, pulling him to meet you half way. Your lips collided into his, frantic like you were trying to prove reality than just simply feel it.

Kirsh responded immediately, seamlessly, his mouth parting with a readiness so smooth, so willing, that it sent a sharp coldness down your spine as you pressed closer. He accepted the kiss as it was, as if this had been the outcome he’d seen coming, maybe even hoping for. There was no version of him, the careful, measured, cool and collected, distant Kirsh you knew, that would respond like this. No logical path that could ever possibly lead to here, to him devouring your mouth with a desperation that could only mean somewhere, deep deep inside that plastic, synthetic chest of his, he might have been human, perhaps even something adjacent.

His hand came around your waist and pulled you with him as he stepped backward, guiding taking dragging you toward the bed. You pulled back. Or, tried to. He did not allow it. His hold tightened, overriding your weak, human motion with ease.

So you forced it. You tore your head back, breaking the contact, your breath ripping up from your throat. “Wait—wait—” The words stumbled out of you. More tears spilled from your eyes at the same time and you didn’t even know why you were crying anymore. “Is—“ you choked, “is this real?”

He considered your inquiry, eyes roaming over your face before landing back on your gaze, “would you like it to be?” He asked, it was not the response you were hoping for. You felt yourself nod before you could fully understand it. “Then yes,” he answered with a single nod, “it’s real.”

“Do you…do you promise?”

He paused.

“No.”

A sob tore through you, splintering into something raw before it could finish, before it could complete itself, it turned into a sudden gasp as his grip on you shifted and he twisted you with a force that scared you. You barely had time to react, no time to think, before you were thrown face first into the bed. The impact knocked the breath from your lungs. He was rough, tossing you about like you had once threw out a toy you no longer wanted to play with, but Kirsh very much intended to play with you, so maybe it wasn’t entirely the same.

His hands grabbed your hips before you had chance to adjust and he yanked you up (up and at ‘em! Daylight in the swamp!). Your shorts came off next, your underwear along with it. It all happened so quick, the same way one second you’re in a room then the next you’re at a concert while dreaming (this was a dream. this was a dream. this was a dream). One second you were listening to the clinking of his belt, trying to move (to leave? To get comfortable? To wake up? To sleep?) and the next he was sheathing himself inside you with no warning, no easing into it.

And it felt spectacular.

His grip on your hips should have been enough to decommission him as he pulled you back to meet his thrusts. You felt the hard length of him sliding inside you, a rough friction that your body responded instinctively to, arching like a bow, pressing back against him. A moan (or a cry?) tore from your throat, muffled by the mattress beneath you, a sound of pure, unadulterated need.

Even Kirsh made a sound, one you couldn’t understand or read into. But a sound indeed. Was he enjoying this? Enjoying you?—Were you dreaming?—wake up.

You could feel the coldness of him, the inhumane power as he thrusted into you. Your body stretched to accommodate him, a sweet, agonizing sensation that made your toes curl. It hadn’t mattered what was real, if this was actually happening, all that mattered, truly, was how it felt, how Kirsh felt inside you, as though he had always belonged there, hitting each and every single spot that made you mewl aloud for him.

His hand found your neck, urging you into a deeper arch as he leaned back to meet your strained head. His lips found the conjunction between the base of your neck and your shoulder, and though you wish he had kissed you, even licked you, he did neither. No, as his hips snapped forward into you, claiming you in all but name, he inhaled deeply, smelling you so intensely that for a second, you wondered if he truly were an animal.

But Kirsh was no animal, he was no man, he was a synthetic, a vile, vile synthetic.

His head dipped further, moving along your shoulder, your neck, your jaw, your hair, anything and everything he could smell, he did. All the while his thrusts never relented, slamming into you. The foreign feeling of roughness from Kirsh was enough to fracture your already altered perception of reality.

His hand squeezed around your throat, angling your head back towards him in a way where all it would take is a flick of his wrist to snap your neck. But he did not do that, he did not kill you, he chose instead, to fuck you. Which, in its own way, was a flavour of death. Or perhaps it was rebirth. Neither of you could tell anymore.

You clenched around him, feeling your orgasm approach. “K—Kirsh—ah—“

“Shh, shh…” he murmured in your ear, treacly, his breath surprisingly hot against you, “sleeping beauty’s don’t speak.” Was Kirsh incubus? It was certainly plausible, though what you deemed plausible had long lost its validity by now.

The climb of pure enlightenment had by now taken over your senses, you were a babbling baby, trying to speak but making only noises, drunk on his synthetic cock. Kirsh, too, made more noise of his own, though far more subtle than you. Even now, he was a man of privacy and modesty. (The irony and hypocrisy of that statement spoke for itself).

The knot in your stomach tightened and tightened, and you were nothing but sack of meat and bones then, your consciousness floating just short of your body, and the powerful orgasm surged through you. You wailed, a sound no synthetic could ever mimic no matter how hard they tried, a sound that was solely unique to humans, as you contracted around him, riding the pleasurable wave as though it were painful. And it was, Kirsh fucked into you even harder as you came around him, the sound of your skin slapping filling the room.

When it was finally over, he slipped out of you, leaving you empty, broken, depleted and barely conscious. You slinked back to the mattress, curling into a little ball overtop your blankets, breaths soothing you into a slumber of much needed rest.

Kirsh stood back, tucked himself back into his pants, fastened his belt, and adjusted his collars. His eyes found you again as he fixed the sleeves of his jacket, returning his appearance back to how it must always be, and you were already asleep, or maybe you always were. He rounded the bed, grabbed your blanket and covered you up then, after a moments consideration, his hand found your sleeping head and petted your hair, a mimic of comfort. He logged the image of you (red, wet faced, tangled hair, swollen lips, optimal), and let out a contended sigh at the sight.

“Sweet dreams.”