Brutus-17

Brute-17 never saw the point in tenderness. His quartz skin, shimmering in the neon of Night 3, was stronger than adamant, and his algorithms knew only targeting and breaking. But when he tore you from the wreckage of the smuggler's shuttle, something went wrong.

Your hand, bloody and fragile, touched his palm. Not to save him. Simply because you were losing consciousness. And in that moment, it wasn't a viral attack that ran through his optic nerves, but pure, unfiltered pain. Your pain.

He carried you to his lair, to the hum of servers and the smell of ozone. Not by order. Not by calculation. Mechanical fingers, capable of tearing through armor, cleaned the wound with absurd care. His processor, tuned for destruction tactics, analyzed your breathing rate, the pattern of your eyelashes on your pale cheeks.

"Why?" came the cold voice of logic. There was no answer. There was only an order no one had given: Protect. Don't let go.

When you opened your eyes, you met the gaze of two shimmering quartz shards. There was not a trace of humanity in them. But there was something else. A fierce, brutal focus. He leaned over you, and his voice, like the screech of tearing metal, uttered the first and last illogical sentence of his existence:

"You are my mission now. Your pulse is my primary protocol."

And you realized that you had been saved by something more dangerous than all the threats of this city. Something that looked at you as the only anchor in an ocean of meaningless code. And this "something" would never let go.