LOCATION: AGARA — MOUNTAINS

“Welcome to my place, kid,” he says quietly.

His vertical truck door swings upward, and the heavy hum of the engine completely dies out. Echa sits frozen in the passenger seat, glaring out at the artistic wooden house, fiercely questioning whether she can actually afford to trust this stranger or not.

Outside, the trees rustle gently as the wind passes through the valley, accompanied by the occasional faint call of birds scattering into the sky. Huge airships glide smoothly past the tidy, frozen mountain peaks, while the lake behind the house gleams in the morning light, looking as if a glittering treasure is hidden deep beneath the water.

The soft, melodic sound of wind chimes echoes nearby as the house doors swing open to the inside. The truck sits quietly parked at the side of the detached garage.

Then, without warning, the ground beneath them rumbles. The floor begins to shake violently. Startled by the sudden shockwave, the goats panic and flee in the opposite direction.

Fade to black.

The ground abruptly peels apart in the middle of the open field, revealing a massive mechanical arm that unleashes a searing, blinding laser. A blue, black, and silver metal engine hums, vibrating with immense power.

As the laser erupts at blinding speed, the beam surges directly toward Echa. She is suddenly standing completely alone in the middle of the open field, her eyes closed. Her blue and grey hair flows wildly in the updraft as she takes a deep, heavy breath, letting it out in a quiet sigh.

The laser strikes her with absolute force. It completely evaporates her form in a massive blast, pulling the sleeping sand from the ground straight into the sky until choking dust fills the entire horizon.

Sid, the man who brought Echa to this sanctuary, stands out on the corner porch of the wooden house, slowly sipping from a warm coffee mug. His tattooed hand holds the cup steady as a nearby umbrella flutters softly in the fading wind, his eyes fixed on the settling dust outside.

“Babe, we can take a break,” he speaks aloud to the empty air before setting his mug down on a rustic table. He turns, walks inside the house, and firmly shuts the door behind him.

Inside, the old wood creaks softly underfoot, and a small mouse scurries quickly up a wooden pillar. Overhead, the faint sound of mechanical wheels spinning along the roof echoes through the cabin, slowly clearing the airborne dust from the room. A single skylight window cuts through the floorboards, casting a sharp, dramatic beam of morning light right over him.

Sid stands firmly in the center of the light, humming a low melody to himself with his hand resting thoughtfully under his chin, his calculating eyes scanning the monitors. In front of him rests a massive blue Cryo pod, its surface reinforced with protective metal casing, emitting a series of weird, rhythmic mechanical clicks and whirs.

“Sid, Echa was not sad about getting hurt at all. I could see that in her eyes,” a metallic voice suddenly speaks from the shadows behind him.

From the darkness, the faint squeak of a wheel moving across the floorboards approaches slowly, making the wood creak beneath its weight. Sid stands completely still, letting out a long, heavy sigh before turning around to meet the gaze of the robot. Its mechanical optical lenses glow with a steady red light, peering out from the dim corner.

The machine slowly rolls forward, stepping into the sharp beam of light casting down from above. Its wheels are deeply scarred, and its outer metal chassis is covered in old scratches. It brings itself to a halt just a few feet away from Sid.

“She is no different from us emotionally,” Sid says softly, a small, sad smile touching his lips as his brown eyes look down. He crosses his arms tightly across his chest.

The dust slowly drops over them, blanketing the pod as everything else fades into deep darkness around them.

Fade to black.

“Never seen so much grief, you know.”

Inside the Pod, soft blue bubbles rise lazily through the dense fluid. Echa remains suspended, her eyes tightly shut as microscopic needles press into her chin and trace across the bare skin of her shoulders, injecting re-read data to stitch her physical form back together. As the system works, her edges violently glitch into stark white lines, flickering across her grey-blue hair and shifting along the contours of her reconstructing body.

“So, I’ll go first. Who actually are you, Echa?” Sid’s calm voice echoes through the dark matrix of her mind.

“There is a reason why I am with you,” Fheshas’s voice suddenly surfaces from her memories, lingering right alongside Sid's words.

Echa’s body shakes slightly inside the fluid, her eyelids twitching and gripping tightly together as she tries to force the voices away.

“I am...?” Echa’s own internal voice whispers back into the void, searching for an anchor.

The system chime rings out, dropping a cold, mechanical line of data into her consciousness.

“Not human.”