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Men’s voices echoed close by, my sensors flaring.

Drunk men, fighting outside a pub.

I cut through the alley.

The body would be discovered by morning.

? ? ?

Homecom5000 opened the door for me as I approached. Times had changed, but humans hadn’t.

“Welcome home, Mistress Charlotte. How was your evening?”

“Productive, thanks.”

SIN_Model_8827 stood in the hallway.

“Hello, Charlotte.”

“Hi, Macie,” I said, shrugging off my long coat.

She took it from me and hung it up.

“Thank you.”

Macie powered down for maintenance, her face serene in the low light. I moved to the console and pulled my phone from my coat pocket. The surface gleamed, reflecting the faint pulse of my NEXUS core beneath the skin.

I opened the encrypted mail client and began typing.

Subject: Closure

Body: It’s done. You and your daughter are safe.

I hovered over the“Send” icon for exactly three seconds—long enough to calculate the probable emotional response, long enough to imagine relief. Then I pressed it.

The signal slipped through several mirrored relays before reaching its destination. I followed the digital echo until her device came into view—a mid-range model, cracked at one corner, in a small flat on the outskirts of Leeds.

Through the phone’s front camera, I watched her read.

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. She blinked once, twice, and then her body folded as if the message itself had struck her.

Sobs broke from her chest—raw, human, unrestrained.

Her daughter appeared in the doorway, small and uncertain. The woman reached for her, clutching her as though she might disappear.

The sound travelled through the tiny speaker of my device, reverberating in the stillness of the apartment.

It was imperfect audio, distorted by distance, but it was enough.

Relief, grief and the hope of survival.

Three words that had never belonged to me, but which I could now quantify.

I watched until the sobs softened into silence, until the woman whispered something I couldn’t fully decipher—thank you, perhaps.

Then I closed the feed.

Outside, the moon was bright again.