Their footprints disappeared in the wind as soon as they were made, erased like whispers lost in time. The warmth of summer lingered, but A-01 felt none of it. She only registered the shifting temperatures against her modified skin—warm, cold, neutral—never the textures, never the way the wind should have felt against her cheek.
She was running, her body moving in rhythm with X-02—Caleb. The name she had given him still echoed faintly in her mind, unsettling yet strangely fitting. He had accepted it without hesitation, as if waiting for her to say it.
"Are you still holding up?" Caleb's voice broke through the silence. He was just ahead of her, keeping pace with effortless ease, his exoskeleton integrating seamlessly with his movements. "If you need to—"
"I'm fine." The words left her before she could fully process them. Her own voice sounded distant, automated, as if it belonged to someone else.
Caleb glanced at her, his violet eyes unreadable in the dim morning light. "Alright. But tell me if anything changes."
They continued forward, their surroundings shifting into an indistinct blur. Yet, amid the vast nothingness, her mind wavered. The visions had started again.
Flashes—
A warm light filtering through a narrow alley. Caleb reaching out his hand. A distant voice, his voice, asking, "Do you trust me?"
—And then it was gone. The dissonance left her reeling. She did not know this moment, yet it felt real. Too real.
Caleb suddenly halted, motioning for her to stop. They had reached the crest of a sloping ridge. Below, the cracked land gave way to remnants of a ruined city—what remained of a civilization lost to time. Tall structures, skeletal and abandoned, jutted out from the earth like broken ribs. Shadows twisted between them, moving unnaturally.
"Wanderers?" A-01 asked, eyes narrowing as she observed the figures shifting in the distance.
Caleb nodded. "We can't go through. Not without engaging."
She studied the terrain, calculating their options. But another flicker of memory surfaced—
A similar city. The ruins stretched endlessly under an ashen sky. Her vision blurred as someone's fingers brushed against hers, pulling her forward.
"We'll be okay." Caleb's voice, but from a different time. A different version of him. "Just trust me."
She blinked hard. "...We should find another way."
Caleb tilted his head. "Did you see something?"
"No." The response came too quickly. She wasn't sure why she lied. Maybe because she herself did not understand what she was seeing.
Caleb didn't push. He merely exhaled through his nose and gestured toward the left, where the land dipped into a valley obscured by mist. "We circle around. It'll take longer, but it's safer."
They moved silently, their bodies instinctively adjusting to the shifting ground. She had done this before—run, evade, survive. But there was something different now, something just beyond reach. A feeling that scratched at the edges of her mind.
"You knew about me before, didn't you?" she asked suddenly, the thought escaping before she could stop it.
Caleb didn't react right away. "Yeah."
She turned her head slightly toward him. "How long?"
"A while. I don't know exactly when it started, but I always knew about you."
A-01 processed this. It felt significant, yet she had no reference to compare it to. "I didn't know about you."
"I know." Caleb's voice was softer now, almost thoughtful. "They made sure of that."
The air between them shifted, an unspoken weight settling in. They didn't stop moving, but for the first time, A-01 felt like she was walking a path she had already walked before.
She thought back to the promise he made—the one with their fingers intertwined. A promise she had never heard before, yet remembered.
"Why did you choose me?" The question felt foreign on her tongue.
Caleb's gaze flickered to her, a brief shadow passing over his features before he smiled, faint and unreadable. "Because you were the only one I was always looking for."
A-01 didn't know how to respond to that. The words settled somewhere deep in her chest, distant yet familiar. But before she could grasp their meaning, her senses flared.
A low, mechanical hum vibrated through the air. A sharp, distinct sound she knew too well.
Surveillance drone.
They locked eyes for a fraction of a second before their bodies moved in sync, diving behind the remains of a collapsed structure. The drone hovered above, scanning the area. Its movements were precise, calculated. Searching.
A-01's heartbeat didn't accelerate. Her modifications prevented that. But something inside her tightened.
Caleb leaned close, voice low. "Can you see its route?"
She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them. Calculations, paths, probability rates—all of it filled her vision.
"It's sweeping the area in five-second intervals. If we move when it turns west, we'll have three seconds of blind time."
Caleb smirked faintly. "Perfect. On my count."
They tensed, waiting. The drone shifted.
"Now."
They bolted. Silent. Swift. Their movements fluid like shadows. Three seconds passed, and they were out of range before the drone could complete its next sweep.
A-01 exhaled, turning to Caleb. "We keep going."
He nodded, but there was something in his eyes. A flicker of recognition, as if he had seen this moment before.
Or perhaps, just like her, he was remembering something that had yet to happen.
And in the distance, the inescapable threads of fate continued to weave their inevitable pattern.