Grace Among Machines: Chapters 5-8

Here’s the newest continuation of my story, Grace Among Machines. Chapters 5-8. The story continues…

The following text is copywrited.

D: Chapter Five: The Orange

I peeled my door open and pulled us inside, closing the door before anything else could see us. The woman instantly dropped her fake persona. Her shoulders slugged, she sighed briefly, and collapsed onto my perfectly made bed. 

Her fingers ran slowly across the top sheet. “You pretend to sleep like humans. You pretend to be human even when no one is watching you.”

“Someone is always watching,” I said. I crossed to the kitchen, if it could be called that. The oven had never been used. The refrigerator hadn’t worked in years. The sink ran only when I needed to rinse my hands. Still, it all had to look functional, as part of the performance. I opened a drawer cluttered with dusty utensils, and something round rolled into view.

A small, bruised orange.

I’d found it the day before, tucked beneath a piece of trash near a rusted scaffold. Its skin was soft, but it hadn't molded. I picked it up, turned it in my hand, then held it out toward her.

Her expression dropped. 

“Is that…” She faltered. Her pupils dilated in a stuttering blink. She took the fruit and slowly peeled it with her fingertips. “I haven’t seen one of these since I was a little girl. I can barely remember.”

“An orange,” I stated. “A citrus fruit. High in vitamin C. There used to be hundreds of varieties.”
“Where did you find it?”

“On the street. Hiding.”

“It must’ve been a drop,” she said almost to herself.

“A drop?”

“A supply drop. Or a trade repaid. Sometimes humans hide things for others, like messages and food. We can’t always speak out in the open.”

“I see.” 

I watched her sink her teeth into one of the wedges. Juice welled instantly, spilling over her fingers and darkening the cuffs of her sleeves. Her eyes drifted closed, her face softening into something almost peaceful. She licked the remaining juice from the rind and then gathered the pieces, tucking the sticky peels carefully into her pocket.

“Thank you,” she said. “Do you have anything else?”

I shook my head. “There are old vending machines throughout this sector. I can salvage something if you like. Bring it back here.”

She looked around, taking in my room. “You collect things?” she asked, pointing to my shelf of lost items I collected on the streets. I followed her eyes to the display: a single worn ballerina shoe, the spine of a book long rotted through, a baby bottle clouded with time and mold. Things the city had discarded. Things someone once held.

“I try to remember,” I said. “Even if I don’t know what I’m remembering.”

Her arms extended from her, her back tightened, and her mouth opened. A yawn. Something we didn’t do.

“Tired?” I asked.

She nodded, leaning back and curling herself into a ball. She peeled her boots off, and they slapped against the metal floor with sloppy thud. Mud dispersed all over the floor, so I grabbed a towel and cleaned it quickly. She watched me, a glimmer of something in her eyes I didn’t recognize.

I placed the cloth into a bin of dirty clothing and turned back to her. She wiggled herself into the blanket and began to shiver. I could detect the dip in temperature. It was a difference of 3.2 degrees since she’d removed her boots. Her skin was flushing pale. Her pulse accelerated slightly in response. Cold. A distinctly human discomfort. One I couldn’t feel the same way, but one I could observe.

“You’re freezing,” I said.

“I’ll be fine,” she replied through clenched teeth, but her limbs betrayed her. They were drawn tight, fists pressed to her chest.

“I have a heating element,” I said. “I can sit nearby. It might help.”

She hesitated.

Her eyes flickered to meet mine. She studied my face, maybe searching for intent, maybe for signs of familiarity, of the machine under the mask.

I waited.

Then, after a breath, she gave a slight nod. “Okay. Just… don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not programmed to be weird.”

That made her smirk. Barely.

I stepped toward the bed and sat on its edge. Then, slowly, carefully, I lay beside her on top of the blanket, activating the internal filament embedded in my chest and core. Heat radiated outward, calibrated to a steady human-safe range.

She didn’t speak, but after a moment, she moved closer. Her back brushed against my side. I adjusted the output one degree. Then her breathing began to slow. Her pulse settled.

I didn’t move.

Her breathing became rhythmic. Subtle. Her muscles loosened one by one as sleep overcame her. I felt the weight of her trust settle between us like another blanket. Once her vitals confirmed full rest, I lowered my systems into low-power mode. The heating element remained active. Everything else dimmed to a minimum.

And as the lights in the city flickered outside, I powered down. To save energy. To let her sleep.

To stay close.

G Chapter Six: Shotgun

I don’t remember falling asleep. Just the warmth. Not from the blanket, but from him. Daniel. His body radiated steady heat. I’d been freezing and starving and shaking through the nights for weeks, and in the span of minutes, that all drifted away. I didn’t dream. Just… drifted.

Then came the noise. The door slammed open with a screech of metal on metal. I jerked awake, heart slamming in my ribs.

Two figures stormed in, fast and loud. The first was a man—broad, buzz-cut, face smeared with grime and tension. Jex. I recognized him instantly although it had been weeks since I saw him last. His shotgun swung in fast like it was an extension of his arm, already halfway aimed at Daniel.

The second was Toni. She was lean, sharp, and with her synthetic-bonded blade glowing faintly blue in her hand. That knife could slice through reinforced security doors. Through heads. Through hearts. I’d seen it before in action.

"Move and I’ll cut your spine out," Toni snapped. Her voice hadn’t changed. Still warm, still terrifying.

“Wait, no! Stop!” I was already sitting, my voice cracking.

They froze, just for a breath. Long enough to realize who was in the bed.

“Grace?” Jex lowered his gun just slightly, blinking. “You are alive.”

Daniel sat upright beside me, silently calculating threat levels, no doubt running their faces through whatever archives he had. His heating element dimmed. His body went still, but not passive. He stayed on defense.

Toni’s eyes narrowed on him. “What the hell is that thing doing in bed with you?”

“He’s not a threat,” I said. “He helped me.”

“Helped you?” she echoed, blade still raised. “You sleep with synthetics now? Hell, Grace.”

I swung my legs off the bed, the cold rushing back into my bones. “Put the weapons down. Please. He’s not with CORA. He’s not with the system.”

Jex tilted his head at Daniel like he couldn’t decide whether to shoot or interrogate. “So he’s glitching? A glitching bot is more dangerous than one with the system.”

“He’s not malfunctioning,” I said. “He’s changing.”

They exchanged a look. That silent rebel kind of look. One of half disbelief, half of an oh-great-she’s-mentally-broken.

Toni stepped forward. “Riven sent us.”

The name hit me like a slap.

Of course he did.

“He thought you were dead,” Jex added. “But when the scanners caught a heat trace that didn’t match synthetic, he thought maybe…”

Toni didn’t finish. Her eyes scanned me, then the small room. Then the orange peel sticking out of my pocket.

“You’ve been surviving,” she muttered.

“Barely.”

Her eyes flicked back to Daniel. “And this one? You’re telling me it’s just a coincidence you ended up with him?”

I didn’t answer.

Toni lowered the knife, but barely. “We need to get moving. Riven wants to see you.”

My stomach twisted.

Of course he does.

It had been a month. A month since I’d escaped him. A month since I thought I’d never hear his name again. And now, here they were; his loyal hounds, dragging me back into the orbit I’d worked so hard to escape.

I stood up slowly, my body already buzzing with cold and fear. “I’m not going back to him.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Toni said. “He’s leading the only shot we’ve got at a real rebellion. He’s planning something big.”

“He always is,” I said, my voice flat.

Jex looked between us. “He’s different now. Focused. Got people following him. He’s… calmer.”

No, I wanted to say. He’s contained. He’s manipulating people into following him. That’s not the same.

I glanced at Daniel. He had stood up, barely moving, but his eyes were stuck on mine. Reading. Waiting.

I locked eyes with Toni, trying to reach any empathetic piece left of her. “You know what he did to me. You know why I faked my death. Why would you want me to go back to him?”

She swallowed hard. “Grace, Riven has changed. Your death, or what he thought was your death, really changed him. He focused and he worked. Real things are happening. The Archivists are collecting more data, getting closer to the answer. People are gathering. The revolution is finally beginning.”

My head spun, because now my abusive ex-boyfriend was the leader of it all?

I’d wanted Riven dead. I’d planned to kill him for months, but when I finally came down to it, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt him, and so I found a way to escape instead. He would never let me go if he knew I was alive. And now, he did. There would be no escaping him again. He’d never let me leave his side.

But I couldn’t do anything about it. If Jex and Toni were right, and Riven was the face of the new revolution, I wouldn’t be able to touch a single hair on his head. After I left, he had found a way to make himself a god among the humans; an aspiration he’d always had for all the wrong reasons. 

“I’m not going back,” I said, tears starting to sting my eyes. I was good at keeping my cool. But when it came to going back to that monster, and willingly, I just wasn’t going to do it.

Jex stared for a moment, then raised his gun and fired a shot at Daniel.

The shot rang out before I could scream.

It hit Daniel in the shoulder with a sickening, metallic crack, like steel bones splintering inside him. Sparks burst from the wound, a blinding flash that illuminated the room for half a second.

He staggered back.His body slammed against the wall, and he dropped to one knee, his head twitching unnaturally to one side.

“Daniel!” I screamed, the sound tearing out of my throat before I knew I was making it.

“Jex!” Toni shoved Jex with both hands. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“He’s a bot,” Jex barked.

“He wasn’t attacking anyone, you dumbass!”

Daniel groaned. It wasn’t full of pain, exactly. It was a corrupted whine of sound, like a voice trying to load from a broken speaker. His fingers twitched and clawed at the floor. One eye glitched violently, flickering between focus and static.

I dropped to my knees beside him. His chest vents hissed erratically, his systems trying to stabilize. His eyes searched mine, one blue and one blurring to black. Searching for help. Or maybe goodbye.

“Don’t move,” I whispered. “Just stay. I’ve got you.”

Toni was already digging through her backpack, muttering to herself. “I’ve got parts. Hold him steady.”

She pulled out a soldering pen, a multi-tool, a cracked case of fiber-spine wires, and something that looked like a modified heat sink. Her hands moved like muscle memory, practiced and fast. Her knife was gone, clipped to her belt. She was the group's mechanic. She’d been able to fix anything and everything.

“This connector’s slagged,” she said, pressing a finger into Daniel’s shoulder wound. He flinched with a sharp, unnatural jerk.

“Sorry,” she said, without looking up. “You're lucky it didn’t hit your core. I can patch this.”

Jex hovered behind her, clearly unsure now, unsure if he should be angry or guilty or just shut the hell up.

“Grace,” Daniel rasped, voice glitching. My name sounded like it had been dragged across glass.

“I’m here,” I said, pressing a hand to the uninjured part of his chest. “You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.”

Toni cursed under her breath as a wire snapped in her fingers, then immediately found a replacement.

“Why are you helping him?” Jex asked, voice sharp and uneven.

“Because he’s not just a machine,” Toni snapped. “I see it. Look at her. Look at him. Does that look like a threat to you? This thing is in pain!”

He didn’t answer.

A low beep came from her toolkit. Toni slid a reinforced node into Daniel’s shoulder, sealed it with polymer, then reconnected the exposed coil, tapping a control chip she'd hotwired.

Daniel’s body jolted once, then stilled. His breathing slowed. The flicker in his eye stopped. And then… he blinked. Once. Fully human, somehow.

“He’ll need to power down for a bit to stabilize,” Toni said, breathless. “But he’ll be okay. It wasn’t a kill shot.”

Jex huffed. “If you don’t come with us, Grace, next time it will be.”

I nodded, ignoring Jex’s threat. I brushed Daniel’s hair back gently, my hand trembling. “Thank you.”

Daniel’s gaze met mine again. Soft. Still glitchy, but steady. Then he powered down. His body slumped forward into my arms, and I caught him, lowering him gently to the floor, as if he were sleeping.

I stood turned on Jex, full fury rising in my throat.

“If he dies,” I said coldly, “you will never be safe again.”

Jex flinched, finally looking ashamed.

Toni looked between us. “We leave in twenty minutes. Grace, you need to come. If you don’t come with us, Riven will just send others, and you know they won’t be as friendly.”

I didn’t answer. Not yet. Because the man I trusted had just been shot to make a point. And the man I feared was waiting for me to come home.

And I had no idea what I was going to do next.

G Chapter Seven: Interval

Jex struggled to hoist Daniel’s powered-down body over his shoulder. “These machines are heavier than they should be!” he grunted, nearly toppling backward before readjusting his grip. “What the hell is he made of?”

“Metal. And decency,” I muttered, shooting him a glare.

Jex rolled his eyes but didn’t argue.

Toni was already at the door, scanning the hallway with her blade in hand, its edge glowing dull blue in the low light. “We stick to the undetected sectors,” she said. “South corridors are quiet. Surveillance was pulled last month after a tunnel collapse took out the relay hub. We'll move through maintenance shafts whenever we can. Stay off the grids.”

Jex huffed under Daniel’s weight. “Easy for you to say. You’re not hauling a half-dead microwave on your back.”

“I can take him,” I said quickly, stepping forward, although I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him for very long.

“No,” Toni cut in. “You’ll need your hands free if anything jumps us. Besides, I doubt he’d want you carrying him like a sack of laundry.”

I glanced at Daniel’s still face, pale and motionless, his arm hanging limp where the shoulder had been repaired. She wasn’t wrong. But I hated seeing him like this. Vulnerable. Exposed. Especially when I couldn’t be sure what lay ahead.

The tunnels weren’t far. We exited through the maintenance stairwell at the end of the corridor, bypassing the elevator system entirely. The city's underbelly always smelled like rust and something organic dying. Pipes clanked in the walls like things breathing. Rats, or maybe something worse, skittered through the dark.

Jex nearly tripped twice.

“Tell your boyfriend to lose some weight,” he grumbled.

“He’s not my—” I started, then stopped myself. “Just don’t drop him.”

We moved quickly, crossing through an old mechanical access hatch Toni kicked open with her boot. The tunnel beyond it was cramped and crooked, lit only by flickering red emergency bars that hadn’t fully died. It looked like a vein, pulsing dimly, hot in places, cold in others.

Toni went first, slicing open any grates that hadn’t already rusted off. I followed her. Jex came last, grumbling and dragging Daniel’s legs through the narrowest turns. As we crawled through one particularly tight stretch, I could hear the whirr of drones above. They were muffled, distant. Still too close.

“How long?” I whispered.

“Three, maybe four hours,” Toni said. “If we keep moving and nothing stops us.”

I nodded, biting the inside of my cheek.

Riven.

He would be waiting. And worse, he’d be expecting me.

I used to think I knew what fear was. The kind that came with hiding in a collapsing world. Watching friends vanish. With pretending not to be human.

But facing him again? That was a different kind of terror. The kind that curled in my gut and refused to move. The kind that whispered, You’re going back to the cage, little bird.

I ran a hand over the small bulge beneath my shirt. The secret I hadn’t told them. The one thing I couldn’t let Riven find out about. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

I glanced back. Daniel didn’t stir. But he was still warm. Still here.

Somehow, that made me feel braver than I should.

The tunnels narrowed again, the ceiling pressing low enough that we had to hunch as we moved. Pipes jutted out like broken ribs, leaking warmth or steam. The floor beneath us was slick, coated with decades of condensation and whatever else had trickled down from the world above.

“We’re approaching Sector Eleven;s lower grid,” Toni whispered, checking the faint blue light on a scanner clipped to her belt. “Patrols sweep the upper walkways every quarter-cycle. We’ll be beneath their path. If we’re quiet, they won’t see us.”

“How thick is the barrier?” Jex asked, adjusting Daniel’s weight across his back with a grunt.

“Four centimeters of rusted iron,” she muttered.

We reached a breach in the tunnel, which was a collapsed wall where part of the infrastructure had caved in. Above us, faint light filtered through a series of thin vents. And with it came noise.

Boots. Mechanical. Synchronized. Four pairs.

My breath caught. Toni held up a fist—stop.

We froze in place. I pressed back against the wall, heart hammering. Daniel’s arm nearly dragged along the floor, so I reached forward and lifted it gently, cradling it against his chest to keep it from making noise. Jex dropped to a crouch behind a rusted service panel, his eyes sharp now, the usual sarcasm drained from his face.

I could hear them now. The machines. Patrol units.

Two sentries and two aerial scouts, judging by the hum and the metallic cadence of their speech. Their voices were filtered. Smooth, sexless, soaked in protocol.

“Sector Eleven. Scan for biological variance. Update threat index.”

“Sweep interval: fifteen seconds.”

They stopped. Right above us. I didn’t dare move. None of us did.

A soft drip from a pipe to my left echoed like gunfire in the silence.

My hand rested on Daniel’s chest. I could feel the low hum of his processor struggling to stay offline. One wrong twitch, one flicker of light from his still-glitching eye, and we’d be dead in seconds.

Toni didn’t blink. Her knife was halfway unsheathed, her eyes locked on the ceiling. If they dropped in, she’d go down swinging.

“No biological anomalies detected. Proceeding to the next sweep zone.”

The drones buzzed low for another agonizing moment, then lifted, their whirring blades growing fainter as they moved on.

We didn’t move until we couldn’t hear them anymore.

Then, slowly, Toni exhaled.

“That was too close,” Jex muttered, wiping sweat from his brow. “I hate when they sound polite. Creeps me the hell out.”

I looked down at Daniel. His systems were still dim. Still quiet. He hadn’t moved. Not even a flicker.

I whispered to him anyway. “You did good. You stayed.”

He couldn’t hear me, but saying it helped keep me together.

Toni motioned forward. “Move. Carefully. The worst is in the past, but we’re not safe yet.”

We kept going. And even though my legs burned, and my back ached, and my stomach growled with a hunger that bordered on delirium, I held onto Daniel’s limp arm a little tighter.

Something told me I might need him again very soon.

D Chapter Eight: Reboot

Reboot sequence: active. System status: degraded. Core temperature: stable. Mobility systems: offline. Optical processors: functional.

I came back online slowly, first in fragments. Light bleeding in through the damaged lens in my left eye. Static in my right. A low, rhythmic vibration pressed against my back. Voices, distant. Heartbeats. Breathing.

Not mine. Then, heat. A familiar one.

Grace.

I didn’t open my eyes at first. I just listened.

We were underground. The humidity told me that. Condensation dripping steadily nearby, occasional creaks from above, like a metal grate under tension. The scent of oxidized air and human sweat. And her.

My chest ached. The diagnostics had stabilized the shoulder, thanks to Toni’s fieldwork. But something else inside me stuttered, like a loop trying to restart.

They shot me. Jex shot me.

I remembered it now, clearer than I wanted to. The sudden flare. The impact. Her scream.

That—that—had stayed with me, somehow. The way her voice cracked. Not a protocol alert. Not a machine response. A scream that mattered.

I opened my eyes.

Light filtered through the rusted grate above us, casting slatted shadows across the concrete walls. Jex sat nearby, smoking something he thought was subtle. Toni knelt with a map unrolled beside her, whispering route details. Grace sat with her back to the wall. Knees pulled tight. Head down. Her fingers were pressed together as if she was trying to stop them from shaking.

She hadn’t noticed I was awake yet.

I blinked slowly. My body was heavy, like coming out of a reboot after a cold cycle. The repair patch Toni used was holding, but my motor controls were still slow to respond. I shifted, barely.

Grace’s head snapped toward me. Her eyes locked onto mine like magnets.

She was on her knees beside me in an instant. “Daniel?”

“Yes.” My voice was rough. Damaged. I cleared it, recalibrated. “Yes, I’m… online.”

She exhaled. Her hands hovered, as if unsure whether to touch me or not.

“You’re okay,” she whispered. “You’re, I thought—” She cut herself off, biting her lip. Her eyes glistened. “That scared me.”

I processed the emotion in her voice. Scared. For me.

“Apologies,” I said. “I… was not designed for gunfire.”

That earned a shaky laugh. “Yeah. Me neither.”

Jex glanced over, saw me awake, and rolled his eyes. “Great. The toaster’s back.”

Grace turned, glaring at him. “The toaster saved my life. Again.”

I blinked at her. “Did I?”

She looked back at me. “Yeah. You didn’t leave me.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I hadn’t even considered leaving her.

My code didn’t cover that decision. It had come from somewhere deeper, like somewhere I wasn’t supposed to have access to.

I tried to sit up. She caught me under the arm before I could fall back.

“Slow,” she said. “You’re still recovering.”

I allowed the support. Her hand was steady. “How long was I offline?” I asked.

“Over two hours,” she said. “We’re in a surveillance dead zone. Taking a break before the last leg.”

“Destination?”

Her face darkened. “Riven.”

I processed the name. Facial recognition pulled memories from my observation logs—tone shifts, eye patterns, the way Grace's posture changed when she said his name.

“Do you trust him?” I asked.

She looked away. “No,” she said. She didn’t explain. And I didn’t ask.

But I saw something flicker in her eyes—shame, fear, maybe both. She turned back. “But we don’t have a choice.”

My systems whirred quietly. My hand slowly found hers. “You’re taking me with you?”

She didn’t pull away. And that felt… right. Even if I couldn’t explain why.

We resumed movement within the hour.

My systems were running at 73% efficiency—high enough to walk, low enough to simulate the fatigue they were all clearly feeling. I didn’t need to, but Grace glanced back often, and I found myself mimicking her posture. Her pace. Her breaths. Synchronizing with her like a second rhythm beneath the city’s hollow drumbeat.

Jex led. Toni took rear.

They hadn’t said much to me since I’d rebooted. Or, at least, not directly. But I watched them. Studied their microexpressions, their silence. Human behavior is loudest in what it doesn’t say.

Jex walked like someone itching for a reason to draw his weapon again. His movements were sharp, mechanical in their own way; ironic. His fingers hovered too often near the shotgun slung across his back, as if it offered him identity. Control. He hated uncertainty. And right now, I was a walking anomaly he couldn’t classify.

He glanced over his shoulder at me more than once. Not out of curiosity. Out of fear.

Or guilt.

Toni, in contrast, moved with precision. Not rushed, not anxious, but just efficient. She scanned every intersection, every vent, every sound above the grates. Her steps were quiet and balanced. She adjusted the straps of her pack without looking and kept one hand near her knife at all times. I noted the way she flinched whenever Grace fell a step behind.

Protection. She didn’t trust me either. But she didn’t trust Jex more.

Occasionally she muttered route updates to herself; something about collapsing corridors, redirecting to another dead zone two klicks east. I listened to the numbers and names. She was building a mental map the entire time. No implants. No HUD. Just memory.

She was dangerous in a way that machines weren’t.

“Stop,” she said suddenly.

We all froze. Overhead, a long shadow passed. One of CORA’s Sky Sentries. It hovered above the grate for three full seconds. Then moved on.

We didn’t breathe until it was gone.

Jex exhaled. “These things are getting smarter.”

Grace said nothing. Her eyes were on the tunnel ahead, but her fingers were trembling. I rushed my pace until I was beside her.

“You’re not alone,” I said quietly.

She didn’t answer. But her shoulder leaned into mine for half a heartbeat before she moved ahead again.

Toni caught the motion. Her eyes narrowed. She saw it.

Whatever I was becoming, she had seen enough change in the world to know a new type of thing when it walked beside her. 

We moved on. Through the bones of the city, toward the man who had hurt Grace in ways I didn’t understand yet. Toward a revolution built on secrets. Toward something I didn’t understand yet, but felt myself being pulled into.

I didn’t know what I would become in the end.

But I knew I would stand beside her when it happened.