Darkness clung to the corners of her mind like oil.

  She woke to metal pressing into her back - cold, uneven, humming faintly. Her limbs were tangled in debris, wires curled like vines around her torso. Something sparked nearby. She flinched.

  Pain surged - not sharp, but wrong. Like every inch of her was humming out of tune. She tried to breathe. No air came. Her chest didn’t rise. Panic flared - fast and sudden, like a match struck too close to her thoughts.

  Breathe. Just breathe. In, two, three… out, two, three-

  But there was no air. No lungs. Just a hollow cavity echoing with the voice in her head. Her eyes snapped open. Ceiling. No—roof plating. Rusted metal sheets bolted together, sagging with time. Water dripped through a crack and splattered against her face. It ran down her cheek, cold and steady.

  She didn’t blink. Her fingers curled. The motion was too smooth - mechanical. Her palm flexed. Joints clicked faintly. A thin sheen of oil slicked her fingertips.

  Hands. My hands.

  She sat up too quickly. Her vision lagged for half a second, then corrected. Vertigo washed over her. She gripped a broken strut beside her and waited for the world to still. Something creaked behind her. She turned—

  A lifeless construct slumped against the wall. Missing one eye. No chest plate. Dried arcane residue clung to the cavity like soot. Around her, the remnants of dozens more: arms without owners, cores stripped clean, skull casings pried open like oyster shells.

  A junk heap.

  I’m in a junk heap.

  She looked down at herself. Her chest was plates of matte alloy in slate and storm-gray. Lighter metal over her joints, darker around the core. No obvious insignia. Her arm bore a small tag, flush with the surface—barely visible in the low light. She rubbed away some grime.

  'K4-G88-L096-O88881-T667-R3891'

  Below that, smaller text—partially scratched out:

  'PROPERTY OF...

  [illegible]

  —SENTIENT CAPABLE. DO NOT—'

  The rest was gouged too deeply to read.

  What is this? What am I?

  Her thoughts spun, untethered.

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  She remembered-

  A desk, stacked with files.

  The smell of cloves.

  Ink stains on dark fingers.

  Walking home through fog.

  A name. A case.

  A partner laughing at something she hadn’t said.

  His face, worried, asking her not to do.. something.

  None of it belonged to this body.

  None of it should still exist.

  She pressed her palm to her chest. The metal was cool, unmoving. No heartbeat. No breath. But the memory ached—not in her body, but in whatever part of her still believed she had one.

  This isn’t mine.

  She sat in the cold a long time.

  Eventually, the ache of stillness grew worse than the ache of motion. She pushed herself to her feet. Her legs resisted - the joints stuttered, then lurched forward with a low grnkkh of dry servos. She staggered, caught herself against the wall. Metal groaned. Something shifted deep in her chest - plates adjusting under pressure. It felt like her ribs were rotating. Her skin itched. No—the plating. It flexed slightly with movement, like armored leather trying to mimic muscle. Too slow. Too unfamiliar. She moved like someone wearing themselves inside out. One hand braced the wall. The other trembled slightly with motion feedback. The tiny gears in her wrist squealed once, then quieted.

  She took a step. Then another. A low, soft light cast faint shadows where her eyes turned. She caught the glow in a cracked piece of mirror—two pale irises surrounded by shifting concentric rings, humming faint blue in the gloom. A strange, angular face looked back at her - somewhere between mannequin and death mask.

  She stared at it.

  “I…”

  The word scraped its way out, glitching slightly on the first syllable. The voice was low, modulated - her own cadence buried under several layers of distortion. She touched her throat. Nothing moved there. The sound had come from behind the plating.

  “…I…”

  She 'swallowed' on instinct, only.. she couldn't. Nothing shifted inside of her.

  “…don’t sound like me.”

  Even whispering, the resonance carried - like crystal dragged over steel. It echoed faintly in the chamber.

  “I don’t…”

  The words crumbled. She didn’t cry. She couldn’t; her creators hadn't installed tear ducts in her. But her vision blurred for a moment—optics overcorrecting. A flicker of false moisture clung to her nonexistant lashes. And then it passed.

  One foot after the other, she limped her way through the salvage pit. Over shattered limbs. Over ruined torsos. Past one still-burning warforged with its rune-core split open like a fractured egg. A broken sword lay nearby, rusted into the dirt.

  She pushed open the gate. Hinges screeched. Wind hissed across her chest vents, drawing steam from exposed coolant lines. Her plating shifted, sealing tighter. Outside, rain fell sideways. She stood at the edge of the junk heap, looking at the gray silhouette of a city in the distance.

  Somewhere behind her eyes, a name surfaced like a bruise:

  'Aksha.'

  Not from the tag. Not from the heap.

  From somewhere deeper.

  She didn’t know if it was her name…

  Or just the one that felt most familiar.