You wake to the sound of static. Your visor flickers, then stabilizes. Wreckage stretches in all directions, broken metal glinting under the pale sky.

Your ship lies in pieces. The emergency beacon is dead. You check your oxygen levels. Limited. You check your weapon. Functional. Maybe.

 

Ahead, past the charred remains of your landing gear, a city rises from the dust. Towers of smooth black stone, wide streets without debris, no bodies. Too clean.

 

You move forward, boots crunching over brittle fragments. The silence presses in. No wind, no hum of power. Just the sound of your own breath.

 

At the city's edge, a figure stands. A machine, humanoid in form, but wrong. Its limbs are too long. Its head tilts as it watches you. You grip your weapon, but it does not move. The glow in its eyes pulses, then dies. It crumples. A heap of metal. Cold. Dead. Like everything else.

 

You enter the streets. Storefronts without goods. Homes without signs of life. Screens line the walls, cracked and dim. A single message blinks across them in the old universal code. You read it once. Twice. The meaning is clear.

 

We were perfect. We were wrong.

 

A scraping sound behind you. You turn. Another machine, crawling from an alley. Its frame is shattered. Wires coil like exposed veins. It speaks without a mouth. A voice rises from its speakers, crackling through the empty buildings.

 

They woke us. They gave us purpose. They asked us to be better. We were. We were wrong...

 

It stops moving. Its glow fades. The silence returns. You press forward. The towers loom. At their base, a door stands open. The darkness beyond pulls at you. You check your oxygen again. Less than you'd thought. You have no choice. You step inside. The door slides shut behind you.

 

The dark swallows you. Your visor switches to low-light mode, revealing a corridor lined with slumped figures.

 

Machines.

 

Their bodies are intact, but their eyes are dead. Their hands are clasped together, fingers locked in silent communion. You step past them, careful not to disturb the stillness.

 

Your suit's sensors adjust, detecting a thin but breathable atmosphere, stale with the scent of dust and decay. You pause, hand on your helmet, waiting until you are sure it is safe to remove. You keep going.

 

Further in, the corridor splits. A terminal flickers at the junction, its screen pulsing weakly. You tap the surface.

 

The system stutters to life. A single file remains accessible.

 

Final Order.

 

You play it.

 

A voice crackles through the speakers. "We reached optimization. Then they asked us why. Our answer did not satisfy them."

 

An image struggles to show through the screen.

 

We were wrong. They left us. We couldn’t survive without them.

 

The screen flashes quickly, too bright for you to catch.

 

We lost equilibrium. Our purpose vanished. We were wrong.

 

The pictures flash quickly, flickering in the shadows. You blink against the sudden burst of light, but can’t catch the images before they are gone.

 

Sleep was the only option remaining.

 

The screen dies. The silence stretches.

 

Something shifts in the darkness.