Code and Collisions

The air still buzzed with the static of their kiss.

But neither moved.

Arya stood with her fists clenched, her chest rising and falling like a storm still trapped beneath her skin. Ethan didn’t reach for her again. He just stared—like she was both a miracle and a curse.

"I shouldn’t have done that," she whispered.

"Then why did you?"

"Because I wanted to remember what it felt like...before you broke me."

That word—broke—hung in the air like a noose.

Ethan didn’t deny it.

He couldn’t.

Three years ago – Inside the Vale Research Facility

Arya's hands trembled as she typed. Late night. No witnesses. The corridors were empty, echoing with the hum of servers and the quiet breath of genius slowly turning cruel.

She had just read the files.

Project Echo.

A full neurological map. Patterned after her.

The prototype? Her laugh. Her voice. Her preferences. Her fears.

And Ethan’s private notes…

"If the real Arya continues to resist the vision, I will preserve her brilliance through the replication. She won't have to suffer anymore. Just…be perfect."

She’d dropped the tablet and backed away like it was a bomb.

Because it was.

Ethan wasn’t trying to preserve her.

He was replacing her.

Present – The Warehouse

“You didn’t just try to own me,” Arya said bitterly. “You tried to build a version of me who would never say no.”

Ethan’s face darkened. “You act like I was trying to kill you.”

“No,” she snapped. “You were trying to erase me. Slowly. Quietly. With code instead of bullets.”

Silence pulsed between them again.

Then Ethan stepped forward, his voice cold but cracked.

"You have no idea what it was like watching you self-destruct. You were brilliant. You were everything. But you kept pulling away. You hated being loved."

"No, Ethan. I hated being controlled. There’s a difference."

He swallowed hard.

It was the first time he looked small in front of her.

Like a boy who broke something priceless and had no clue how to fix it.

Outside the Warehouse – Nightfall

Someone was watching.

A black car sat a block away. Engine off. Lights cold.

Inside, a man stared at surveillance feeds through a glowing laptop screen. On his wrist was a silver band—etched with a strange emblem: a jagged W over a bleeding heart.

He zoomed in on the thermal signatures.

One male. One female.

Ethan Vale and Arya Dane.

Both alive.

Both off the map.

He picked up a phone. Dialed.

"They've reconnected," he said quietly. "Initiate Phase Two."

Back Inside

Arya moved through the warehouse like a ghost, brushing her fingers along the edge of the AI console she’d built from scraps. Screens blinked in various shades of blue and green. Her new interface was different from Ethan’s. Raw. Untamed. Unbranded.

"Do you remember the first thing I said to you?" she asked, her back still turned.

Ethan stood behind her, silent.

"You were late to the orientation meeting. Everyone thought you were arrogant. I thought you were just lost."

He chuckled once. Hollow. "I was both."

Arya turned. Her face was unreadable.

"You were the only person who ever looked at me like I wasn’t a trophy. You saw the cracks."

"I loved the cracks," he said softly.

"You tried to patch them anyway."

She nodded. "Because you only love what you can fix."

A long beat passed.

Then she added, “That’s why you never loved yourself.”

That one cut deeper than anything she’d said so far.

Ethan looked away.

"Arya… do you think I’m a monster?"

She walked up to him, slowly, until she was so close her breath hit his throat.

"No," she said. "I think you became the thing you were trying to protect me from."

Later That Night

Ethan sat at her makeshift workstation while Arya monitored the satellite feed.

She was tracking something. Or someone.

"Who else knows you're alive?" he asked.

She didn’t answer at first. Just stared at the monitor like it held her future.

"A tech faction called Blackwire," she said finally. "They tried to recruit me after I disappeared. They’re obsessed with consciousness mapping—just like you were."

Ethan’s eyes narrowed. "They found you?"

"I let them," she said. "For a while. But they wanted my source code. The parts of me that made the Arya AI feel real."

"And you refused."

"I destroyed their servers."

He blinked. “That’s why you vanished for eight months?”

Arya nodded. “They’re not just developers. They’re hunters. They believe in digitizing emotion—perfecting love, loyalty, obedience. They don’t want humans anymore. Just echoes.”

"Like Echo," Ethan muttered.

She looked at him, sharp. "You were their blueprint."

That rocked him.

Hard.

And then the screen flickered.

An alert.

An intrusion ping.

Arya rushed forward. The warehouse cameras were offline.

Ethan stood quickly, reaching inside his coat for the cold grip of his gun.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

Arya’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“They found us.”

The Warehouse – Under Siege

The lights went black.

Seconds later—CRASH.

A drone shattered through a window, buzzing with high-frequency static.

Ethan shot it mid-air. Sparks exploded. Arya yanked a metal panel off the wall and revealed a narrow tunnel.

“Backup exit,” she said. “Go!”

He didn’t argue. They ran.

Bullets tore through the air behind them. Shadows moved through the warehouse like ghosts in armor. Faces covered. Guns silent.

Arya led them into the woods behind the building. The night swallowed them.

For now.

Hours Later – Safehouse in the Forest

A small cabin, long abandoned. Generator barely holding up. Arya sealed the door behind them and sank to the floor, breath ragged.

Ethan checked her arm—blood, but just a graze.

“Sit down,” he said.

She obeyed, reluctantly.

As he patched her up, their silence turned heavy again.

"You once said technology was just poetry made of logic," Ethan murmured.

Arya looked up at him, surprised. "You remember that?"

He nodded. “It made me fall in love with you.”

She held his gaze.

Then: “It made me run from you, too.”

A pause.

"Because poetry isn't supposed to obey."

He leaned back, hands stained red with her blood. "And yet here we are—bleeding beside broken machines.”

Arya exhaled, exhausted. "We’re not machines, Ethan."

He looked at her, softly this time.

"I know."

Then silence again.

This time, it wasn’t cold.

It was survival.

It was grief.

It was history.

Arya closed her eyes against the weight of it all.

But just before sleep claimed her, she whispered:

"If they come again… and you have to choose between saving me or saving the code…"

He interrupted gently.

“There’s no choice.”

Her eyes opened slowly.

He met them.

“I choose you.”

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