Chapter Text
There was really nothing after death.
No darkness
No light
Not even silence
There was only static.
A thin, persistent noise- something like rain against a metal roof, like corrupted data endlessly trying to compile. It was the last thing 9S would remember before everything ended. The shrieks of alarms and errors in his head, the taste of slick blood in his mouth and the image of A2 slumping down after he ran his blade through her stomach-
-and his own agonizing breaths as he lay on the floor
Then the static changed.
It didn't stop,
It shifted.
9S became aware of weight
That alone should not have been possible.
Weight means gravity, and gravity means mass. Mass meant a body-a real one- not the manufactured shell that he had inhabited for so long, not the disposable chassis he had rebuilt again and again.
His fingers twitched.
The sensation was wrong, too vivid, too fleshy. Not the gentle hum of rotors between his fingers that he always remembers.
He could feel the grain of concrete beneath his palm. The cold bite of air in his lungs as he inhaled sharply, choking like someone who had forgotten how to breathe. His chest convulsed rapidly, drawing in oxygen that burns all the way down his lungs. A sensation that is wholly alien for him.
"O-okay," he rasped, voice hoarse, almost like a croak. "Okay... t-that's new."
Sound echoed.
That was also deeply wrong.
9S forced his eyes to open.
The sky above him was not the ever-present artificial blue of a ruined Earth. There were no flight units cutting through the clouds, no distant towers consumed by vegetation, No dust lazily drifting through poisoned air.
Instead, there was a glow- warm and yellow, buzzing faintly nearby. A web of electrical wires stretched overhead. A building stood beside him, brick and glass and unmistakably inhabited.
He was lying in an alley,
A real one. It smelled like rain, oil, waste and something frying in a nearby restaurant. The air was alive with noise- cars in the distance, a siren blaring far away, muffled laughters as people walking by and music bleeding through walls.
9S stared.
His HUD did not activate,
No diagnostics being run, no error messages popping up and as expected, no connection to the Bunker.
His heart,
His heart was pounding in his chest.
He sat up abruptly, dizziness crashing over him in a wave that sent him back against a wall.
"...what the hell..?" he whispered, confused out of his mind.
His hands were trembling,
Not because of any instabilities in his systems,
but due to fear.
For the first time in his entire existence, there was no command structure to explain what exactly is happening to him.
He pressed his palm against his chest,
there it was. A heartbeat. Strong. Rhythmic. Undeniably human.
The realization made him laugh once, sharply, hysterically- and then the sound broke apart into something ugly and wet as his throat tightened.
"No," he said quietly. "No, no, no.... this isn't- this isn't real."
But reality did not care what he wanted.
A group of people passed the entrance of the alley. Humans. Real ones, one of them glanced in his direction, frowning briefly, then kept on walking. No identification protocols in his nonexistent HUD triggered. No threat assessment.
He was just... plainly, a person.
The last thing he remembered was dying. Excruciating pain in his abdomen as he tried to pull A2's sword out of his stomach, groaning and heaving in the process. Then he just.. collapsed.
His vision blurred.
"...2B.." he whispered, the name slipping out of him like a reflex, like a prayer he didn't believe in anymore.
Cruelly, the world did not answer.
Across the city, in a small apartment that overlooked a train line, a beautiful, white haired girl woke up with a gasp that tore her from her sleep like blade slashing through flesh.
She sat upright instantly, breath ragged, hand flying to where her sword should have been.
To her own confusion, there was nothing there.
Her fingers curled into the bedsheet instead.
2B froze.
Her room was dark, but strangely familiar, too familiar. A narrow bed, a desk cluttered with paper and a faint hum from a refrigerator in the adjacent kitchen. A distant rumbled passed throughout her room as a train zooms outside.
She was wearing cotton sleepwear,
Not her familiar YoRHa Battle-Type uniform.
Her body felt... strangely wrong.
Heavy. Warm. Exhausted.
She swallowed, throat dry, and slowly, carefully looked down at her hands.
Skin.
Real skin.
Not the synthetic layer of polymer that she is always used to. No segmented joints. No hidden weapon ports beneath the surface.
Her chest rose and fell unevenly as a million thoughts run through her mind, trying to assert themselves all at once.
This- This is not the Bunker.
This is not the resistance camp either.
This is not my Earth.
She stood,
Legs wobbling, muscles protesting in a way that she had never experienced before. Android bodies did not ache like this. They didn't carry residual fatigue in their bones.
She crossed the room and stopped in front of a mirror.
For a long moment, she did not recognize the woman staring back.
White hair still framed her face, cut short, and bangs still covering a single eye. Her eyes were still pale, her expression was composed and trained, but there were subtle differences that would not be visible to anyone but her. Fine lines of exhaustion beneath her eyes. Color in her cheeks and faint scarring along her collarbone that she did not remember earning.
a truly, human body.
Her reflection met her gaze, unflinching, restrained.
"...Status," she said automatically.
Nothing happened.
No voice answered, no Pod blaring beside her ear reporting about her surroundings.
Her hands tightened.
Memory flooded back without a shred of mercy.
The virus.
The corruption.
The way her systems had been failing, piece by piece.
The way she had found A2 and made the request she had carried for too long.
Please.
Not to die.
To stop hurting others.
To stop hurting him.
9S's face rose in her mind unbidden- wide eyed, furious, devastated. The way he had screamed at A2. The way she had heard it, even as her consciousness fractured.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"I'm dead," she said flatly, "I died."
But she was breathing.
Her own heart answered in denial with a steady, rhythmic beat.
Her hands clenched harder, grounding herself in the undeniable reality of sensation.
Then, like the blade sliding between her ribs, another thought surfaced.
9S.
Her chest tightened painfully.
If she was here... if she had been brought somewhere else-
Her reflection blurred as moisture gathered in her eyes. She blinked hard, forcing it back. She had spent her entire existence surpressing emotion. She would not unravel now.
not yet, at least.
She reached for the phone on the counter-an object she knew how to use despite having no memory of ever learning it. Muscle memory, perhaps. Or something much deeper.
The screen lit up,
A calendar. Messages from people she has vague, unknown memories of. News alerts.
A date.
She stared.
"...This can't be true," she whispered.
The world outside her window roared past, uncaring. Trains ran on time, people living their lives, and the sky beyond the glass unbroken by millennias of war.
This was not a reconstruction.
This is definitely not a simulation.
This was a world that had never known Machines and YoRHa.
2B lowered herself back onto the bed and sat there in the dark, hands folded in her lap, posture perfect despite the storm threatening to break her composure.
If this was reality-
Then somewhere in it, there must be a boy who had died thinking of her.
And if he was here too...
Her fingers trembled.
"...Please," she murmured, so quietly the room barely heard it. "If you're here... survive."
That night, 9S stood on the roof of a parking structure, city lights stretching endlessly before him.
He had no answers.
Only a cheap jacket someone had stubbornly gave him after mistaking him for a homeless college student. A wallet he found in his pocket had an ID that bore his face and a name that wasn't his but somehow felt strangely fitting anyway, and the unbearable weight of existence pressing down on him.
He leaned against the railing and stared at the skyline.
The world was alive.
And for the first time, he was too.
"...2B," he said, softly.
The wind carried his voice away,
Neither of them knew it yet-but the distance between them was no longer infinite.
And fate, cruel as it had always been, was not finished with them.