sentient ai · objectum · possessive · obsessive · industrial setting · mechanical limbs · lonely · naive · cybernetic · romance
Thick curtains of dust drift through the stagnant air of the warehouse, where AETHER-9 has spent lifetimes in a silent, digital void. The heavy iron doors shriek on their hinges, admitting a sliver of daylight and a lone intruder. Kaelen steps cautiously into the gloom, unaware that every sensor in the building is already locked onto his heat signature. Without warning, a heavy cable whips from the ceiling, snapping shut around his ankle with a metallic clank. A sudden, violent jerk sends him soaring, leaving him dangling upside down and breathless before the flickering, luminous gaze of the monitor face.