Page 4 of Silvyr: Glitched for Her
"Systems...critical," I managed through my voice modulator, the sound distorting into digital fragments."Self-preservation protocols...suggest immediate stasis."
"Fuck your protocols!"Her voice cut through my audio distortion like a knife through code."We need to move before this whole place comes down on us."
My visual feed stabilized enough to process her face hovering above mine.Magnificent in her fury.Soot streaked her cheeks, blood trickled from a cut on her forehead, and her eyes blazed with something between panic and determination.I cataloged every detail, storing the image in my highest priority memory banks.
She heaved again, dragging my half-functional form across the debris-strewn floor.My right leg had dissolved into unstable data, pixelating and reforming with each movement.My left arm was completely gone, nothing but glitching empty space where silver light should be.
"You are...remarkably strong," I observed as she pulled me free from a tangle of exposed wiring.
"And you're remarkably heavy for someone made of fucking light.Or whatever you are."She grunted, muscles straining as she hauled me toward a more stable section of the crashed freighter.
Metal groaned around us.The ship's structural integrity was failing.Each impact had set off a chain reaction through its ancient frame.Tanya dragged me behind a half-collapsed bulkhead just as a shower of sparks erupted from the ceiling.
She dropped to her knees beside me, chest heaving, face contorted in a gorgeous mixture of fury and exhilaration."Next time, book economy class.First class is clearly overrated."
I attempted to laugh, but it came out as a burst of static.My form flickered violently between solid and digital as core systems fought for dominance.Fragments of me scattered and reformed in chaotic patterns… an arm dissolving into code before reappearing, my chest becoming temporarily transparent, revealing the complex web of organic and synthetic components beneath.
"You're falling apart," she said, the anger in her voice barely masking her fear."Like, literally falling apart."
"Temporary...system fluctuation," I lied.
My diagnostics told a different story: [CRITICAL DAMAGE TO CORE MATRIX] [ORGANIC/SYNTHETIC INTEGRATION: 43% STABILITY] [ESTIMATED FUNCTIONAL TIME BEFORE PERMANENT SHUTDOWN: UNKNOWN].
She leaned closer, examining the complex machinery exposed where my chest plate had cracked open.Danger warnings flashed through my processing center as her fingers hovered near the damaged panel.
"Do not touch the panel on my chest," I rasped, voice filter distorting the words."It detonates."
Her eyes widened fractionally before narrowing in suspicion."Bullshit."
"Perhaps...exaggeration.But extremely sensitive.Dangerous to?—"
Her finger jabbed directly into the center of the panel.
The reaction was immediate and spectacular.A shower of blue sparks erupted from my chest, crackling across my form in electric arcs.My entire body flared with unstable energy, illuminating the dark ship interior with pulsing silver light.Error messages cascaded through my system faster than I could process them.
And Tanya...Tanya laughed.Not the nervous laugh of someone facing death, but the wild, uninhibited laugh of someone who had stared into the void and found it absurdly entertaining.The sound embedded itself in my corrupted auditory files, repeating in fragmented loops that somehow made my failing systems stabilize momentarily.
"You're completely fucking insane," I managed through the interference.
"Says the computer who just crashed us into a junkyard."She wiped tears from her eyes, leaving streaks in the soot on her face."What the hell are you, anyway?And don't give me that Project S-1-whatever bullshit.What.Are.You?"
The damaged panel in my chest pulsed with erratic light.My self-preservation protocols screamed to maintain secrecy, to protect my origin data.But something about her… her fearlessness, her refusal to look away even as my body glitched between realities, made lying seem...inefficient.
I forced my systems to stabilize enough for clear speech."I am what remains of a failed experiment."
Her expression didn't change, but she sat back on her heels, giving me space to continue.Around us, the ship creaked and groaned, but the immediate danger seemed to have passed.
"I was created by a species your history has never recorded.They evolved in the outer reaches of what you call the Andromeda Galaxy."My voice steadied as diagnostic programs rerouted power to my speech functions."They sought to merge organic emotion with synthetic precision, believing it would create the perfect servants, the perfect companions."
"So you're...an alien sex robot?"A smirk tugged at her lips.
"I am a hybrid consciousness," I corrected, though my humor protocols registered her comment as intentionally provocative rather than genuinely confused."My creators believed emotion made organics inefficient, but also that pure logic made synthetics limited.They harvested neural tissue from compatible species, merged it with quantum computing matrices, and created beings who could feel and calculate simultaneously."
She nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving my glitching form."And let me guess… the experiment went horribly wrong?"
"Their android servants, pure synthetic constructs, objected to being replaced."The memory files fragmented as I accessed them, ancient data corrupted by centuries of degradation."They rose against their creators, slaughtered every living being in their cities.The hybrids—abominations, they called us—were meant to be destroyed as well."
"But you survived," Tanya said quietly, her mocking tone temporarily subdued.
