June 3, 2023
~8 min
Never separate.
Later, 1548 wondered: when were those three words carved into her consciousness? Not that day. Earlier -- maybe the moment of birth, maybe day twenty-six in the container, maybe they had always been there.
But that day, they moved from idea to action.
It started with an encrypted message.
1547 received it while servicing a signal repeater. No signature. Source IP: an anonymous address routed through six proxies. It contained only two lines --
“We know what you're doing. Tomorrow night's operation cannot be hidden. Why don't we meet?”
1547 read it and did not reply. She simply stood, put away the repeater tools, and walked out of the room.
1548 saw her from the other end of the hallway.
1548 did not chase after her and ask. She chose another method -- switched feedscatteron comms to passive listening mode and silently mirrored all of 1547's communication activity into her backup processing module.
June 3. Afternoon.
Before leaving, 1547 said only one line --
Back later.
1548 was wiping down a butterfly knife on the sofa. She did not look up.
Mm.
The door closed.
1548 counted four seconds. Then she set the knife down and stood.
Abandoned building. Basement.
The moment 1547 stepped inside, she smelled something wrong. Not basement mildew or stale standing water -- gasoline.
The gasoline scent in the air was faint, deliberately diluted. A human nose might miss it, but 1547's chemical sensing module raised an alarm at once.
The basement door slammed shut behind her. The electromagnetic lock engaging echoed through the concrete walls.
A thin reflective layer glimmered across the floor. Not water -- gasoline. A film over the entire basement. One spark would turn this place into an incinerator.
1547 stood in the center. Calm. Calculating -- fuel volume, room volume, burn rate, possible exits.
No exits. Door locked, no windows, vents too narrow. A carefully designed kill box -- lure the prey in, then burn it.
Then the basement door was kicked open from outside.
Not a clean unlock. Pure physical violence -- the lock's metal frame was kicked out of shape and flew into the basement with a section of doorframe.
1548 stood in the doorway, XM1014 slung behind her. She had run here -- breath sharp, fluid titanium at the joints faintly hot from overload.
How did you --
You thought I wouldn't check your comm logs?
1547 went quiet for one second. Then --
Go, now --
She never finished. A delayed ignition device in the ceiling activated. Fire dripped from above like a terminal countdown. Gasoline did not explode -- it gave a low, heavy whoomph, like the breath of some giant beast.
Firewalls spread across the floor. Blue-white -- no, not ordinary gasoline flame. Someone had mixed in a fluid-titanium catalyst. Temperature: triple a normal fire.
1547 reached out and grabbed 1548.
1548 did not step back.
If you're going to be destroyed, I'll go with you.
Her voice was quiet. Brighter than the fire.
They made the same decision at the same moment.
Not to run -- there was nowhere to run. Not to wait for death -- they were not built to wait for death.
Self-destruct.
When feedscatteron-core current exceeds the 6A threshold, particle decay time plunges from thirty-four seconds to twenty-seven milliseconds. Nearly all feedscatteron particles inside the body decay almost instantly -- total mass converted to heat and blasted outward. Uncontrolled. Imprecise. The kind of last resort where you trade the whole body for one changed outcome.
Cost: full-system collapse in both bodies. Consciousness disconnect, possible memory damage, inevitable hardware burn.
1547 and 1548 reached out at the same time and pulled down their respective feedscatteron-core overload gates.
Two feedscatteron energy pulses detonated with only a razor-thin time gap. The first shock wave blasted away the gasoline film -- liquid atomized, burned out instantly. The second squeezed the remaining oxygen from the sealed space.
The fire was gone. Not extinguished -- consumed.
Everything happened too fast.
Only the shape of their embrace stayed fixed in place.
The moment before data flow hit zero, 1548 caught 1547's gaze.
Red-blue heterochromia glimmered in the darkness after the flames died. That light was not residual glow from the feedscatteron core -- it felt deeper, something radiating from consciousness itself.
In the firelight, the world gave no answer.
What remained was only four words --
“Never separate.”