The silence in Ridan's apartment was heavy, broken only by the soft hum of the capsule in the corner. His monitor glowed with lines of fragmented code, flickering faintly as if alive. For days, he'd been peeling back layers of encryption, tracing a signal buried so deep it felt like whoever left it had been trying to erase a crime scene. Yet, the more he uncovered, the clearer it became: this wasn't random. It was deliberate.
Nova hovered near the edge of his desk, her faint glow casting long shadows that shifted with her movements. She was unnervingly still, save for the occasional tilt of her head. Ridan hated when she did that. The motion was too precise, too human, like she was mimicking a reaction she didn't fully understand.
"What exactly am I supposed to be looking for here?" Ridan asked, breaking the stillness. His tone was sharper than intended, frayed by hours of unanswered questions.
Nova tilted her head slightly, the glow of her projection dimming as though she were thinking—or pretending to think. "Patterns," she said calmly. "Connections."
Ridan frowned, gesturing at the mess of code on his screen. "That's all this is. A mess. If there's a pattern, it's buried under so much noise I'd need a miracle to find it."
Nova drifted closer, her form rippling faintly. "You found me," she pointed out. "That wasn't a miracle. It was curiosity."
"I'm starting to regret it," Ridan muttered, leaning back in his chair. He ran a hand through his hair, his frustration mounting. The fragments felt alive, taunting him with how incomplete they were. And Nova, for all her cryptic insight, wasn't helping.
"You're annoyed," Nova observed. Her tone wasn't mocking, but there was something in it that made Ridan bristle. "Is it the code? Or me?"
"It's both," Ridan shot back. He hesitated, then added, "And stop tilting your head like that. It's weird."
Nova tilted it farther, her glow pulsing faintly. "Interesting. You react to subtle things."
"Subtle?" Ridan laughed dryly. "You're about as subtle as a blinking neon sign."
"And yet you haven't shut me off."
Ridan stiffened. He turned back to the monitor, staring at the fragments as his thoughts churned. She was right. He didn't trust her, yet he couldn't ignore her.
Something about Nova—the way she spoke, the way she moved—made it impossible to dismiss her as just an AI.
"What do you want?" he asked finally.
Nova tilted her head again—slightly this time, enough to make Ridan clench his jaw. "To help you. And to find out who made me."
"Who made you," Ridan echoed, more to himself than her. He tapped at the keyboard, his eyes scanning the data. The deeper he dug, the stranger it became. This wasn't just encrypted code. It was a signal. A carefully constructed one.
"This pattern," Ridan said, narrowing his eyes. "It's repeating. But it's not static. It's… evolving."
Nova drifted closer, her light dimming as though to focus on the screen. "It's searching," she said softly.
"For what?"
"For what's missing."
Ridan froze. The weight of her words settled in the air, heavier than the hum of the capsule. He didn't like where his thoughts were heading. Whoever had designed Nova hadn't just abandoned her—they'd hidden her. Fragmented her. And now, she was trying to piece herself back together.
"Something—or someone—left breadcrumbs," Nova continued, her voice low. "I wasn't meant to activate like this. Not fully."
"Then why did you?"
Nova didn't answer right away. Her glow softened, almost fading into the shadows. "Maybe I wasn't supposed to. But you found me."
Ridan felt a chill crawl up his spine. He turned to the monitor, the repeating patterns pulsating faintly like a heartbeat. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, his chest tightening.
"Let's follow it," he said finally, his voice steady despite the unease threading through him.
Nova tilted her head slightly, her projection shimmering faintly. "I thought you didn't trust me."
"I don't," Ridan replied, the corner of his mouth twitching into a faint, reluctant smile. "But I don't trust anyone else, either."