"What the hell… is this?" I breathed, voice breaking, I could already feel myself snapping. "It's a tattoo, right? I'm not allowed to have tattoos…"
The words tumbled out too fast, like saying them might undo whatever this was. A flimsy excuse. A shield—anything to keep the truth from pressing in against my skin.
But even as I clung to the thought, I knew better. This wasn't a tattoo, It was something else.
"No—no, heh—I need to wake up already. I'm dreaming. This has gotta be a bad dream," I muttered, shaking my head as if I could rattle the thought loose.
The movement shook the bodies around me—until one tipped forward and slumped towards me.
"Augh!" I yelped, twisting to see what had fallen onto me. Its lower chassis was wrong—an unnatural attachment jutting where nothing should be, a faint indicator light blinking inches from my face, like some twisted invitation.
"Eugh—no, get off—!"
I shoved it away. It toppled backward, clattering against the others—
—and then I saw what its feet had been resting on.
A girl.
her blank eyes stared upward—vacant, lifeless, as if they'd seen too much before finally shutting down for good. she had animal ears…and a frozen, lewd smile that made my stomach twist.
My gaze drifted downward, following the fragile, almost childlike frame, over the cracked joints and the torn silicone that hung like slack skin. The outfit… a tiny, suggestive cat cosplay, clinging to its small form in a way that made the brokenness feel all the more disturbing.
she had a burned into the high part of her thigh, just above the hip. The letters were smeared but still sharp enough to read:
/// PROJECT N3O-CHI /// Obedience Protocol Stabilized.
"N...3O?"
The mark on my own skin throbbed in my memory, suddenly impossible to ignore. And once I saw it—really saw it—I couldn't stop. Every body. Every shell around me bore something similar. Codes. Designations. Not names. Almost like model numbers.
Then the realization struck me all at once, sharp and merciless as my lips curled in revulsion.
"No…" The word barely slipped out. I shook my head hard, as if I could fling the thought away. "No, what am I even thinking? No way. No way." But my hands were already trembling.
Because the truth was lining everything up too neatly. The mark. The bodies. The label burned into me. The way I'd been built to function, not to live.
This fragile body was proof enough. I wasn't meant to act for myself—wasn't meant to refuse. I was made soft on purpose. Easy to corner. Easy to use. Something designed to be taken without asking, without caring whether I wanted it or not.
And the lie I'd wrapped around myself—that it was just a tattoo, that it didn't mean anything—finally gave out. It collapsed under its own weight, leaving nothing behind to soften the impact as the truth surged in. It wasn't decoration. It wasn't coincidence. It was a mark of ownership, burned in deep, and I'd known that from the moment I saw it. I just hadn't been ready to admit it.
Looking around at the others, at the stillness of their bodies and the sameness etched into every one of them, the last thread snapped.
I wasn't different from them.
I was just the one that was still running.
I shook my head hard, fists curling tight. "No. No—this can't be real! I'm not… I'm not one of them. It's just… a trick, some stupid trick… I'm still me! It doesn't make sense, it can't—no, no, it's wrong!" The words came out uneven, broken, like I was arguing with the air itself, trying to convince my own mind.
But no matter how hard I shouted, how tightly I clenched my fists, I couldn't deny the evidence staring back at me.
"Why—why—" The words snagged in my throat and refused to come free. My knuckles popped as I squeezed my hands tighter, nails biting into my palms like pain might anchor me. Tears burned at the corners of my eyes. My breathing turned sharp, uneven. My chest ached, folding inward on itself, as if there wasn't enough room inside me anymore.
She was still there.
No—not she.
That thing.
It lay unmoving, eyes fixed in my direction, and I couldn't shake the feeling that it was watching me anyway. Like it knew. Like it was holding up a mirror I didn't want to look into, silently forcing the truth into the open—into words I refused to say out loud.
"Damn it! Damn it—s‑stop—stop looking at me like that!" I shouted, my voice cracking as it tore out of me.
Even as the words echoed back, I knew how pointless they were. It couldn't see me. It couldn't hear me. None of them could. They were just broken machines—silent, inert, empty.
And still I lashed out.
Because yelling at it was easier than admitting what it had already shown me.
"Is… is that what I'm supposed to be?" I asked, my words stumbling out, uneven. My voice trembled, cracking under the strain.
Its face was still locked in that frozen, lewd smile—like a cat in heat trapped in stillness.
I dropped to my knees. "A doll with a pulse?"
The cold silicone of its cheek met my hand like wax. Too soft. Too lifeless. I grabbed its head and shook it.
"Say something," I growled. "Tell me I'm not you."
It just stared. Its eyes, now crossed and misaligned from the shaking, made its frozen, lewd smile all the more twisted.
My hands found its head almost on their own—
I gripped it with both hands —and drove it down into the concrete. Fast. Deliberate.
Like I was helping it remember something.
"Come on—come on—tell me!" I shrieked. It came out too high, too young. More like a kid throwing a tantrum than anything else.
"Tell me it's not true," I cried, slamming the words down with it. "Tell me I'm not like you—tell me I'm a person!"
My voice cracked apart under the weight of it.
Then—
One of its eyes snapped toward me.
Not slowly. Not uncertainly. Just locked on, perfectly still, unnervingly precise. Its mouth twitched, something grinding to life behind it, and a sound crawled out—broken, stuttering.
"W‑w‑w…"
I sucked in a sharp breath and froze, heart slamming so hard it hurt. "Y‑yes—yes," I whispered, leaning closer without meaning to. "Speak to me. H-hello?"
The thing's jaw jerked again. Static chewed through the sound as its voice dragged itself into shape. "Welco—mmmzzzktszzz—master…" The broken, jerky rhythm of its speech felt deliberate—mocking me, making me sound small, desperate, ridiculous.
A fire ignited under my skin, crawling up my chest, clawing at my throat. I staggered upright, vision swimming, blurred by something hot and wet that burned down my face.
My fingers found the same metal pipe I'd used to pry open the locker, heavy and cold, but I didn't care. I lifted it over my shoulder, gripping it like the only solid thing left in a world coming apart at the seams. My hands were shaking, but I held on anyway, knuckles whitening around the metal.
"This… this is just some game to you, isn't it?" The words tore out of me, hoarse and ragged, stripped bare of anything but accusation. Like if it actually answered—if it even could—maybe, just maybe, the pain clawing through me would ease for a moment.
"Just say it, I'm not a toy!"
"I'm not a product, say it."
Then—
CRACK.
The pipe slammed into its chest. The smooth synthetic ribs dented under the force, echoing through the room like a cruel punctuation mark to everything I'd been trying to fight down.
"Please—say it!" I choked. "I'll stop. I promise I'll stop!"
Even as the words left my mouth, I knew they were a lie. I wouldn't stop. I couldn't. I needed to break this thing apart, needed to erase the way it reflected me back at myself. I hated it.
"Stop looking at me like I'm broken!"
CRACK.
I swung again. Part of its arm snapped loose, clattering against the concrete.
"I—I had a f‑family!" I roared. "Th‑they had n‑names!"
I hit it harder. The jaw shattered. One eye ruptured, spilling a thin splash of neon fluid across the floor—already fading, already vanishing, like it had never been there at all.
"I need to get back to them!" I screamed, the words tearing out of my chest. "They need me—they'll die without me!"
My hands shook violently around the pipe. My breath came in ragged gasps, teeth chattering as the cold bit into my skin again like knives. And still I stood there, heaving, surrounded by silence—swinging at something that could never give me what I needed most.
CRACK.
"Th‑they'll die… they'll d‑definitely die…" I stammered, my voice splintering, each word jagged and breathless as it forced its way out of me.
CRACK.
The marking on its hip—N3O‑CHI—fractured beneath the blow, the letters warping, splitting, as if I could break the meaning apart by force alone.
"Where are they?" I screamed. "Where the hell are they?!"
My chest seized as I dragged in air that wouldn't quite come. "I need to get back—I have to get back!"
The pipe wavered in my hands. My strength faltered, not from exhaustion, but from the weight pressing down on me all at once.
"I can't…" My voice dropped, raw and thin. "I can't disappear. I can't leave them."
I shook my head helplessly, the words barely holding together anymore.
"I… I just can't."
The silence that followed was deafening. It pressed in on me, thick and suffocating, like it was waiting for something—anything—to fill it.
"…I hate you."
The words slipped out small at first. Almost startled.
Then I lifted the pipe again. My grip tightened. Something inside me snapped loose.
"I hate you," I snarled, swinging down harder, wilder. "I hate you—I hate you—I hate you!"
The words lost shape, dissolving into sound as I struck again and again, movements turning animal, driven by something older than thought—rage, grief, terror—anything but the quiet that threatened to swallow me whole. "I… I wasn't made to… to just be used and… and smile!"
"I'm not… not your upgrade."
"I'm not your—"The last word tore out of me, raw and shaking:
"—fucking descendant!"
The second I said it, I froze. I'd never cursed like that before. Not once. Not even when I was alone. That word felt foreign in my mouth—hot and ugly—like I'd just spit out something poisonous. But I was too angry to stop it. Too angry to care. It slipped out because there was no other word sharp enough.
I raised the pipe and brought it down again and again—CRACK! THUD! SPLAT!!—until all that remained was a tangled ruin of wires, broken plating, and shivering silence.
When my arms finally gave out, the pipe fell from my hands, striking the floor with a hollow clatter—like a gavel ending a trial no one had survived.
My face was hot, my eyes stinging. Something warm slid down my cheeks again, catching on my lips, salty and sharp. I wasn't sobbing. Just shaking—like the rage had burned itself out and left me hollow, raw, leaking through the cracks.
The silence pressed in around me. My breath hitched again, quieter this time, like even my lungs were giving up.
My whole body had been reduced to a doll. A thing. Rebuilt, repurposed—stripped down to function.
And yet I could still cry.
Why?
The thought landed heavy and sickening. Like the ability had been left in on purpose. Not a mistake. Not an oversight. Like it was meant to stay.
Like it was a feature—something for pigs to gawk at, to laugh at. Something built in so they could enjoy the way it broke.
The salt burned as it slid down my face, mixing with the cold, stinging the corners of my mouth. I wiped at it roughly, like I could tear it away. Like I could stop feeling.
But the tears kept coming—silent, steady. Not because I wanted them to.
Because I couldn't stop.
The room smelled like melted rubber and shame, the air thick with it, clinging to the back of my throat.
There wasn't a single drop of blood spilled from its mechanical corpse. No red. No warmth. I'd wanted it to bleed. I'd wanted to tear that damn body open and watch something human pour out of it—proof that it could suffer the way I was suffering.
But there was nothing. Just cold plastic. Circuits. Clean, efficient layers beneath the skin.
And that left me with another question.
Would I leak the same fluids if I were torn open?
Was there anything human left in me at all?
Or was I already gone—replaced so completely that there was nothing left?
Maybe I couldn't escape it. Maybe I was already dead.
The cold breeze settled in again.
My thoughts won't stay still—they keep skittering, breaking apart, rewriting themselves.
I don't feel right. I feel sick in the head… like maybe I'm going insane. Maybe I can never go back to being Ponderu… that name… why do I still care about those faces anymore? What a stupid name. Who even thinks of a stupid name like that?
The question echoed longer than it should have.
Because beneath the bitterness, beneath the noise, there was nothing solid left to answer it.
I didn't know who I was anymore.
I collapsed forward, draping myself over the wreckage, every muscle drained of strength. Whatever determination I'd had burned out completely, leaving only a dull, aching emptiness. The body beneath me was cold and unresponsive, but I barely registered it. I was too tired to care.
That was when I saw it again.
The label on my own skin.
/// PROJECT N4O-CHI /// Behavioral Integration Phase.
I reached down and tugged the stocking higher, fumbling, trying to cover the mark—trying to hide it, even though there was no one left to see.
That's when I noticed the blood. streaking down my leg. But it wasn't coming from my legs. It was my palm. A thin, red line blooming across my hand.
Blood. Actual blood. Not oil, not neon fuids—real blood, spilling out of me.
I guess when I pulled the stocking up, it smeared, A cut—shallow, accidental. From the pipe. I stared at it. watching it drip, slow and alive. And something inside me twisted again.
"Heh—uhgh… heheh…"
Pressure swelled in my chest, sharp and wrong, like a wire drawn too tight. My head buzzed, my vision tipping sideways, and for a split second I swore I could feel something rattling loose inside me—something that had been holding everything in place.
"Hehehehehe…" The sound crawled up my throat on its own—cracked, breathless. My lips peeled back into a crooked smile, as i stumbled forward, holding my palm out toward the shattered face I destroyed moments ago.
"I-I'm real… I knew it… I'm alive… I'm different!" I gasped, clutching my bleeding hand like it was the last proof I had.
The blood dripped in slow, fat drops—too red, too alive for a place like this. "Look," I whispered—then louder, wild. "See?"
It didn't lift its head. Couldn't even say "Welcome, Master" anymore. But I held my hand there anyway. Like maybe, somehow, it could still understand. "I bleed! I hurt! I laugh! I cry! I'm alive I'm alive I'm al—kkrrZZZT—VVHHhhTT—POP—!"
Something in me twitched. A jolt—like static crawling through the wires beneath my skin. My breath caught. My vision staggered. And for a second… I glitched. Just a flicker—like reality skipped a frame. A shiver crawled up my spine, cold and electric. The air itself felt wrong, heavy, almost resisting me.
Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. "Wh-what'ssSss-Zzzz..."
Suddenly, a flash—red, screaming—flooded my sight.
[INTERFACE WARNING: SYSTEM INSTABILITY DETECTED]
[VITALS: HEART RATE — 134 BPM | BREATHING: IRREGULAR]
A red overlay blinked across my vision, sharp and loud inside my skull
[NEURAL SYNC STAGGERED] [MOTOR FUNCTIONS: UNSTABLE]
[WARNING: FOREIGN SIGNAL INTRUSION]
My knees gave out. I hit the floor hard—metal biting through my jacket, cold like punishment.
[MOTOR CONTROL: 62%]
[MOTOR CONTROL: 58%]
The numbers flickered at the edge of my vision like they'd been burned into my eyes. Everything buzzed. My limbs felt wrong—lagging behind my thoughts, like I was piloting myself through bad signal.
"Huh—?" I hissed, clutching my head as the room tilted. "W-what's happening?"
[MOTOR CONTROL: 36%]
Something was slipping away inside me—fading, fading fast.I didn't know what it meant. But I could feel it.
[MOTOR CONTROL: 24%]
Then the electric shriek of my own limbs locking up drowned everything out. My body spasmed, seizing in place like a puppet with cut strings.
I couldn't get up. Not even to crawl away or scream. The only thing I had control of was my eyes. My body lay face down, but I could see from the edges of my vision. Then I heard it.
"H-help…" A voice—glitchy, broken, not mine—stuttered through the static. It sounded like pleading.
The body with the N3O-CHI brand— The one I'd torn open—was still alive. Making a soft humming sound. Still twitching like it wasn't done yet.
"…hurts… it h-hurts… d-don't… want to d-die…"
Its face was nearly gone—melted into wires and sparking fluid— but one eye, dangling half-shattered from its socket, still tracked me. Locked on. Unblinking.
I froze, every nerve in me recoiling.
"Sca—rrr—scared… ss‑scared… W‑w‑want… to st‑sta—aaayyy…" It cried.
The words jittered like static, caught between a sob and a broken speaker. The same speaker i had smashed open like trash in a rage room.
I had done this. I'd smashed it—no, her—head. Chest. Face. Like it was nothing. Like it didn't matter.
She hadn't deserved this.
She hadn't asked for any of it.
She hadn't chosen to be here.
The thought twisted in my gut, slow and sickening.
She was probably just like me. Forced into shape. Used until empty. Pushed past whatever limit they called "enough." Broken long before today.
And I had killed her.
Why… why did I do that? Why did I let my anger take over?
My hands should have been shaking. My chest should have been heaving under the weight of what I'd done. But nothing moved.
I was frozen—locked inside this body, every command stalling out, every impulse swallowed before it reached my limbs. I couldn't even collapse properly. I just stood there, trapped, sinking inward.
Dread pooled in me, thick and heavy. I hated it. I hated myself. I didn't know how to undo this. I didn't know how to make it right. I couldn't fix it. Not now. Not ever.
An interface flickered—overlaying vitals across its ruined frame. Lines of data crawling over the screen like guilt.
[UNAUTHORIZED CROSS-LINK DETECTED]
[ERROR: PERCEPTION FEEDBACK LOOP]
Glitched text smeared itself against the inside of my eyes, as if they'd turned into a screen without my consent.
"I—I don't…"
[CODE FRAGMENTED]
[EMOTIONAL CORE OVERRIDE]
[UNIT STATUS: UNSTABLE]
"I don't understand!" I tried to scream.
I wanted to clutch my head with both hands, dig my fingers into my scalp, tear the confusion out by force—but my arms wouldn't move.
[ERROR: IDENTITY CONFLICT — N4O.EXE]
[SHUTDOWN FAILED]
[REBOOT: FORCED]
"No—wait—what does that mean?!" I gasped, heart slamming in my chest. "Don't—don't reboot me—don't—!"
Was I going to die? Forget everything this time? Wake up as someone else? I didn't know. But something deep inside me was already slipping.
The girls shattered body convulsed one last time—A ragged, broken breath escaped her cracked lips, voice bubbling like static, fragile and raw:
"D… d-don't… wa…nn-na… d-die… don't wanna dieezzz—ma…"The voices bled into each other, jagged and warped, as if dragged down beneath water—distorted, fading—until all that remained was silence.
Then, shifting—glitching—her voice tried to form words of her own before being dragged back:
"He—help m—Welco—mmmzzzktszzz… sterrrrzzzz—"A sharp, violent shudder—and then she fell still.
[REBUILDING CORE PERSONALITY FILE…]
A final, searing flash of connection burned through my sight—then the darkness surged in and swallowed me whole.