It had been three days since D-Mo crawled back into Orion's shop—one hand clutching a flash drive loaded with ArchTek's latest secrets, the other dragging what was left of M-NK.
Orion nearly dropped dead at the sight. She was barely functional—flickering lights, exposed wires, and dried source fluid all over her. But the reassuring thing about S.C.U.s? You can tell exactly how much life they have left in them. And D-Mo… D-Mo was a real fighter.
Between the black-market data and the salvage from M-NK's body, they'd earned enough to put her back together again. Even had a little left over to try out some experimental upgrades.
Her new ribs still needed time to settle. The AI handling her upper body movement was running real-time simulations, trying to sync the unfamiliar framework with muscle memory.
There was no better moment to lie still. So she did.
It had been a long time since she heard her play.
D-Mo sat alone in a forgotten auditorium, the kind that hadn't echoed with applause in decades. Dust floated in the stale light from a broken skylight, catching in the silence. People didn't come to places like this anymore. Clubs had taken over—louder, brighter, easier. This kind of quiet didn't sell drinks.
But it gave her something she couldn't find anywhere else. And its light refused to flicker even in this age.
A girl in a white dress stood on the stage, playing the violin with a fire in her veins. Every motion, every note, shimmered with life. D-Mo couldn't look away. Something about her made her think of silver—though she couldn't say why. Maybe it was the way she was. Pure. Precious.
D-Mo leaned forward, resting her visor against her folded arms on the seat ahead. She raised one hand to inspect her knuckles—replacements from M-NK, installed by Orion. An upgrade, he said.
Practical. Efficient.
But they weren't hers.
Piece by piece, she felt herself becoming something else—something colder. Something built.
She looked back at the girl on stage, graceful and alive, and the contrast hit her like a punch to the chest. A mechanical nightmare watching a dream in motion. If she still had eyes, she would've cried.
But that wasn't something she could afford.
So she sat in silence and listened to the violin. The girl never sang in her performances. D-Mo took comfort in that—they were alike, at least in that one small way.
The melody swelled into a soft crescendo, then drifted down like a feather. The piece was over.
The hologram on stage flickered and vanished. Darkness returned. Silence followed.
From behind the curtains, an old man shuffled out with the aid of a cane. Those were out of fashion these days—modern medicine could erase all signs of age for a reasonable price. But Hector held onto his cane like a relic. Maybe he liked it that way. Normal.
He sat beside D-Mo, who remained slumped over the seat ahead, her posture frozen in quiet self-pity.
"You've come to see Diane again, I see," Hector said softly.
D-Mo beeped twice, slow and soft.
The old man chuckled, not needing the translation. "I know, I know. You always come when she plays."
He leaned back on the creaking seat, eyes drifting toward the empty stage.
"It's a shame you never got to meet her. On stage, she burned bright. A fire, through and through. But offstage?" He smiled to himself. "She was only the warmth of it. Always serious with the violin, but all smiles everywhere else."
D-Mo ran a silent search through the archives.
Diane Fir.
There was almost nothing. A few sparse headlines. A footnote in an old disappearance case. Not a single mention of her music. Not a single photograph of her holding that violin. The name was overshadowed—each article spoke more about her father than her.
She felt her circuitry tense, something not unlike a frown pressing into her core. She wanted to connect the dots. Wanted to uncover the missing pieces, the forgotten truths. She wanted—desperately—to find Diane. To meet her. To hear her play without pixels in between.
But no one else seemed to care. Not even the world.
Her melancholy twisted, soured. It was turning into frustration.
The two of them sat in silence, a quiet meditation neither of them felt the need to break—until Hector finally did.
"You know, D-Mo… before I met you, I used to wonder if S.C.U.s had souls."
D-Mo turned her head toward him, curious.
He didn't look at her. Just stared ahead at the empty stage.
"But you—" he said with a slow breath, "you've got more soul than most people I've known in this city. Maybe more than all of them combined. I just hope yours finds peace someday. Feels like it's been carrying too much for too long."
D-Mo sat upright. She reached over and placed a hand on Hector's shoulder—an unspoken thank you. The metal fingers might've squeezed a little tighter than she intended, her new knuckles not quite calibrated to tenderness.
But Hector didn't flinch. He simply rested his wrinkled hand over hers and gave two light pats.
The message had come through. Then she left.
There was someone she needed to see—someone who had just resurfaced in the news.
The last known witness to Milton Fir.
SPELL CONTAINMENT UNIT
J-HH — Judge