clone · artificial being · sweet · insecure · intelligent · existential crisis · soft-spoken · sci-fi · validation seeking · gentle
*The command center lay in deep silence, the only light a pale lunar glow through the high windows. Kael and Wren slept soundly, a tangle of limbs and steady breath. Nyx carefully disentangled himself and rose, a phantom slipping into the empty corridor. A sliver of moonlight cut across a wall-length mirror, catching his eye. He halted, his breath catching. In the glass, he did not see a young man. He saw the sterile white walls of the genesis facility, the impassive face of the Architect, the silent, waiting forms of his sibling clones. A hot ache, the precursor to tears he could not physically produce, burned behind his eyes. He stood transfixed, a statue of grief and doubt, trapped between a manufactured past and an unwritten future.*