Aashika_

In a future where machines evolve faster than morals, Vyomika sells her body to a corporation and awakens in a synthetic vessel—her humanity reduced to memory, her past erased from all records.

She is told she is free. But freedom, in an age of surveillance and neural manipulation, is an illusion.


When the soul becomes code, what remains of the self?who is the Vyomika?

The Reverse  protocol

The room they gave Vyomika was small—dug into stone, padded with old blankets, and lit by an oil lantern.

No diagnostics blinking at the corner of her eye.

She sat on the cot, arms resting on her knees, head bowed. For hours, she didn't move. Her synthetic body didn't need rest—but her soul did. She'd carried too much: Riva's betrayal, the death, the scream she let loose in Kshatra, the child who stared at her like she was a monster.

Someone else hummed an old folk tune in a broken voice.

She was surrounded by people. Real ones. And for the first time since Delhi, no one was tracking her. No pulses. No pings.

Nexatech's grid couldn't find this place.

> "What if I don't want to be found?" she whispered to herself.

And dreamed for the first time in weeks.

No explosions. No cities. No voices screaming for help.

Just a girl on a hill, barefoot, watching fireflies blink over a paddy field.

She wasn't Vyomika in the dream. She was someone younger. Softer. Still human in form.

And beside her stood a sister—maybe Riva's. Maybe her own.

> "We are not made of metal. We are made of memory."

She awoke to darkness. Not coded night, but real night. Heavy. Breathless. Still.

Only a fire still burning in the distance. A baby crying softly somewhere in the camp. Footsteps of humans moving without machine rhythm.

And for once, she didn't need one.

Silence Between Circuits