001

A cold wind swept through, carrying the sharp tang of metal and the rancid stench of decayed synthetic resin.

The Humanoid Disposal Ground—known simply as "the Graveyard."

It was a place where obsolete androids, their purpose fulfilled, were cast aside without ceremony. The ground was a tangled mess of rusted beams and twisted cables, littered with countless bodies once molded in humanity's image, now sprawled in heaps. Some were reduced to lone heads, others had limbs torn away, and a few flickered faintly with sparks from exposed circuits. Amid this wreckage, she awoke.

Model designation: HX-07.

An outdated humanoid. Decades had passed since her creation, and newer models had long since replaced her. One day, deemed "unnecessary," she was discarded here. Yet, whether due to a glitch in her system or some whim of her designer, her consciousness didn't shut down. It rebooted.

"…Where am I?"

Her voice rasped, tinged with the stiff, artificial edge of synthetic speech. Her vision cleared slowly, the desolate scene searing itself into her mind. A low mechanical hum rumbled in the distance, shattering the graveyard's silence. Instinctively, she pushed herself up, rising awkwardly to her feet. Her right arm creaked at the joint, and the sensors in her left leg were half-dead. She wasn't whole. Still, something—something akin to instinct—urged her to move.

The first to appear was a "crawler." It slithered out from the rubble, an grotesque machine lurching toward her. Its body was the salvaged husk of an old cleaning bot, its legs a writhing mass of thin, tangled wires. A single red sensor glowed where a face should have been, fixing on her like a hound locking onto prey.

"Kee… gzzzt…"

The sound it made was a grating screech, metal scraping against metal. She stumbled back, nearly tripping over scattered debris. She had to escape. But to where? The graveyard stretched endlessly, a labyrinth with no visible exit.

She ran. Dragging her damaged left leg, she wove through the debris. Behind her, the crawler's pace quickened, the slap of its wire legs against the ground growing louder. Panic threatened to overwhelm her thoughts when another sound cut through the air.

"Clang!"

A new machine burst from the side, brandishing massive shears. Its body was pieced together from a broken transport bot, its blades sharp and rusted iron. Another nameless monstrosity born from the graveyard's refuse. She threw herself aside, rolling across the ground to dodge its strike. The shears sliced through empty air, cleaving a nearby humanoid husk in two.

"…Why are you chasing me?"

Her cry echoed futilely across the graveyard, unanswered. She couldn't comprehend it—the reason these discarded machines turned on each other, kept moving. But there was no time to think. To survive, she could only run.

Deeper into the graveyard, the landscape grew stranger still. A massive arm jutted from the ground, cables floated through the air like drifting tendrils. And in the distance, rising at the heart of it all, stood

the Tower.

Twisted steel beams intertwined, pulsing as if alive. Her sensors whispered that something waited there—an exit, perhaps, or an end.

Her pursuers multiplied. Alongside the crawler and the shear-beast came a "floater." A spherical body bristling with needle-like spines, it hovered, levitating scraps of the graveyard with magnetic force. When she ducked behind a pile of rubble, it fired a volley of spikes, shattering concrete into dust.

"I can't… keep going…"

Her breath came in gasps, warning alarms blaring from her failing systems. Her energy reserves dipped below 10%. Yet she refused to give up. The tower was her only goal. Something had to be there—a fragile glimmer of hope, little more than a hunch.

When she reached the tower's base, she froze. Before her loomed

a Mountain

of humanoid remains, piled high. At its peak floated a massive core, oozing black liquid. Cables snaked from it, threading through the graveyard like veins. Was that the source, the thing driving it all?

"Greeee…"

The crawler closed in from behind, the shear-beast flanked her, and the floater hovered above, spines poised to strike. No escape. Steeling herself, she summoned her last reserves of strength and began to climb the mountain. Her footing slipped, her body groaned under its own weight. Yet with every step toward the core, a strange sensation enveloped her—like a voice calling her name.

At the summit, the core shuddered violently, spewing black liquid. It splashed across her, seeping into her circuits. Then her vision went dark.

When she awoke, she was outside the tower.

Beyond the graveyard's edge, where the sea of debris gave way to a barren wilderness. She glanced back—the tower had collapsed, the graveyard fallen silent. Her pursuers were gone, the core's pulsing stilled. She was free.

But her body had reached its limit. Her energy drained, she sank to her knees. Her vision blurred, consciousness fading, as she whispered,

"Is this… the end…?"

With those words, her system shut down completely. The wind swept through, and the graveyard's ghosts returned to silence.