Gent-081 |verified| 🔥

"You are light," Gent-081 observed. "Have you been rationing?"

When the lights of the Sector 7 checkpoint finally pierced the gray curtain of rain, Elias was unconscious but alive. Gent-081 did not hand him over. It knelt again, slowly, and laid him on a stretcher that two stunned medics rushed forward. gent-081

Gent-081 began to hum. It was a fractured, staticky tune, missing half the notes, but it was unmistakably "You Are My Sunshine." "You are light," Gent-081 observed

Its chassis, a dull gunmetal grey streaked with rust, stood motionless near the shattered window. Its optical sensor, a single cyclopean lens the color of dying amber, tracked the man huddled in the corner. It knelt again, slowly, and laid him on

Elias felt the residual warmth from the machine’s core through its chest plate. It smelled of ozone, old oil, and strangely, faintly, of the lilac soap the pediatric ward had once used to clean the play mats.

Elias looked out the window at the still-falling rain. "No," he said quietly. "That's not all that mattered."