I

2K 112 15
                                        

"Mom, where are they taking Vyrt?"

The words drifted through the haze of your consciousness, muffled and distant, like a whisper carried on the wind. You couldn't move. Couldn't open your eyes. Couldn't even confirm if you had eyes to open. Your world was a void—a black, suffocating nothingness. All that remained was sound and the raw, unrelenting sensation of pain, gnawing at the edges of your very being.

"Away, son. Vyrt is... not feeling well right now. These people are going to take Vyrt to get fixed."

The voice was calm but strained, teetering between reassurance and something else. Fear, perhaps? Or was it guilt? You couldn't tell. You wanted to ask questions, to reach out and grasp for answers, but your body refused to obey. You were a prisoner in your own form, a silent listener in a moment you didn't understand.

Then, amidst the agony, you felt it.

A hand.

Small and warm, it wrapped around your wrist with gentleness. The sensation was nice—soothing against the pain, grounding against the chaos.

"Don't be gone for too long, Vyrt," the young voice said. A child's voice. Innocent, pleading.

Vyrt. Was that you? The name stirred something in the depths of your fragmented mind, a faint flicker of recognition that quickly slipped through your grasp.

For a fleeting moment, you focused on the sensation of that hand, on the way its fingers tightened ever so slightly, as if trying to anchor you to something. Someone. You let yourself fall into that feeling, clinging to it like a lifeline.

And for a brief, miraculous second, the pain receded.

Then, as quickly as it had come, the hand released you.

The void surged back, more suffocating than before. The pain returned, sharper, more vivid, as if punishing you for daring to find solace. The voices faded, drowned out by the thrum of something mechanical, something cold and unfeeling.

And then you woke up.



Your optics flickered on, faintly illuminating the familiar walls of the west wing garage. You blinked once, twice, as if trying to ground yourself in the present, the here and now. Slowly, your gaze swept the room, cataloging the details to confirm you were still where you had last powered down: the clutter of tools on the workbench, the faint hum of the charging station, the tiny imperfections in the garage's paintwork. No darkness. No pain. No disembodied voices calling your name.

Just the garage.

Just home.

Home, and all the problems that came with it.

You sighed softly, the sound echoing faintly in the quiet space, and reached up to unplug the charging cable from the port in your head. The motion was automatic, mechanical—like so much else about you. Standing, you stretched, feeling the satisfying click of gears settling into place and the faint pop of joints realigning.

"Hello world," you said.

The digital clock mounted on the wall read 6:30 AM. Early, even by your standards. Most of the manor's drones would still be in low-power mode, and the humans of the house? Definitely asleep. Your duties wouldn't begin for hours yet, leaving you with the rare luxury of free time—though "luxury" felt like an exaggeration given your state of mind.

Divine Singularity || Reader x Murder DronesWhere stories live. Discover now