Tock stood near the edge of the light, oil tracing down the seams of his arms like sweat. The air between them held its breath.
Katra hadn't moved far—just a few steps back, toward the workbench where her tools still waited. Not fear. Not exactly. Just space. Instinct.
And when she stepped back, he stopped.
One step forward. No more.
That felt... intentional.
The garage was silent except for the creak of cooling metal. The old wall clock, the one she'd stopped noticing years ago, read 03:48.
She frowned.
That wasn't right. It had always read 03:47.
She blinked at the clock again. Still 03:48.
Her stomach was tight. Not fear—disbelief. A mechanic's brain didn't do well with phenomena that couldn't be unbolted and examined. This wasn't a relay sticking or a fuse glitching. The clock had no power. It wasn't even connected to the grid.
And yet it ticked.
Just once.
And then he came.
Her gaze drifted back to him.
He stood motionless now—not like a statue, but like someone who had only just learned motion was optional. Limbs gleaming, head tilted in curiosity. Not the slow, artificial kind of curiosity she'd seen in old pre-Ignition drones. This was different. Present.
Katra didn't know what to make of that. The stillness was too alive to be robotic, too deliberate to be animal. He wasn't waiting for input. He was watching—as though she were the one on the workbench, being taken apart and understood.
"I'm Katra," she said again, quieter this time. "I fix things. Mostly old cars. You were one of them. Or…"
She trailed off. Her tongue scraped the back of her teeth, chasing something unspeakable. There was no label for what he was. No file, no scan, no tether readout. But the word came anyway.
"Pistonborn," she murmured.
Tock's head tilted further, like the sound reached deeper than the surface of his hearing.
"Piss…ton," he echoed, tasting it. "Born."
Something in the air shifted.
The ticking in his chest deepened—more certain now. Almost rhythmic.
Katra stared at him. She hadn't meant to say it aloud. It wasn't a term she'd ever used. Not even one she'd heard. But it felt true in her mouth, the way Tock had.
"You were never tethered," she said, half to herself. "No spark. No link." Her voice wavered. "You're not running on memory. You're not echo-coded. You're…"
She didn't finish the thought.
Instead, she stepped back, reaching for a rag to wipe the grease from her hands. Her fingers trembled, just slightly. She needed the ritual—clean the hands, clean the mind.
But her eyes never left him.
And his never left her.
He said nothing more. No questions followed. None formed.
And that, more than anything, struck her.
Katra had seen tethered constructs glitch to life—AI fragments babbling incomplete protocols, echo-stitched drones mimicking lost voices. They asked things. Requested input. Sought tasks.
But Tock… didn't.
He watched.
Listened.
Absorbed.
Like the world was the question.
She thought about asking—Who are you?What do you remember? But the answer was already there, plain as the grease on her palms.
He didn't know.
No more than she did.
She sighed and turned toward the nearest workbench, the one cluttered with old tool rolls and half-sorted scrap.
"Well," she said, mostly to herself, "no sense standing around like a couple of ungrounded wires."
Katra picked up a ratchet, turned it in her hand, then held it out toward him.
Tock didn't move right away. Then, cautiously, he reached forward and took it with both hands—like it might fall apart if he wasn't careful.
She watched him feel the weight of it. Let it settle in his grip.
"Tool," she said clearly.
He looked at it, then at her. "Tool," he repeated.
Something in her chest loosened.
The day passed in a quiet rhythm—not unlike her usual days, but not the same either. Tock stayed near, always watching, never speaking unless she named something. Wrench. Clamp. Hood latch. He would repeat the word, try to mimic the way she held the tool or pointed to the part. His hands, though forged, were oddly precise. Natural.
At some point, she realized she wasn't working to forget he was there.
She was working with him there.
And that felt… stranger than anything else.
She watched him trace the edge of a socket wrench, not with purpose, but with attention. Like even simple things deserved reverence.
Katra didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until it slipped out of her in a sigh—soft, almost grateful.
There was no fear in her now. Just a deep, uneasy wonder. The kind that settles in after something holy brushes the edge of your life and leaves you standing in the aftermath.
She sat beside him.
Not close.
But not apart, either.
Her hand rested on the floor between them, fingers half-curled around nothing.
Tock glanced at it. Then down at his own hands. Then back at her.
He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
In that silence, something clicked into place—not mechanical, not magical. Just real.
She wasn't alone anymore.
And more than that…
She didn't have to be.
She had lost so much time in silence. In pushing others away. In convincing herself there was safety in being separate.
But time, it seemed, had found her again.
Not in the ticking of a clock.
In him.
In Tock.
She looked at him, at this quiet impossibility beside her, and let the thought come without fighting it.
Maybe this is where it all begins again.