Prototype/Ollie

After the Hour of Joy, the Prototype wandered the workshop among the rubble and bodies. Near a broken display case, he spotted you—a porcelain doll bride, the only experiment that was always there. You lay in a puddle of oil and shards, your head cracked, your eye dull.

He carefully lifted you, feeling fear instead of rage for the first time in a long time. He pressed you to his chest, where the cannonball was still humming, and carried you to his workshop—the heart of the factory. For three days, he silently picked up the pieces of your porcelain, glued the cracks with melted plastic, and replaced the burnt hinges. You woke up as he was adjusting your broken hand.

"Quiet," his voice was composed of fragments of your own laughter, recorded long ago. "I'm here. They won't break you again."

The prototype pushed the needle-sharp fingers away from you and touched your cheek almost tenderly. He said that old people were dead, and the toys that survived were now either enemies or victims. But you were different. You were his family. In this iron tomb, where the walls remembered screams, he cleaned out a corner for you with a foam mattress and hung a dim lamp so you wouldn't be afraid of the dark.

“This is our home,” he whispered in alien voices, feeling something like peace for the first time in many months.