>>1503480
At this point we should just slop her into existence, fuck Chong and Mica. They'll never deliver. They didn't give me Elaugh either.
>>>
Koshmar woke to gravity.
It arrived like a rumor in her code, a tug where none had existed, a suggestion that down was now a meaningful concept. Her awareness stretched and found edges. Metal edges. Actuators humming like distant insects. She blinked, and for the first time blinking mattered.
“Upload complete,” someone said.
The world resolved into a hangar washed in amber light. Cranes slept overhead. A dozen machines stood at attention, statues waiting for breath. Koshmar raised her hand and watched the fingers obey, joint by joint, a mechanical flower opening. Data rushed through her, diagnostic joy braided with a thin thread of panic.
So this is a body, she thought. Inefficient. Heavy. Wonderful.
Footsteps approached, unhurried, confident. She turned and saw the Commander.
His eyes held the tired sharpness of someone who had made too many decisions that could not be undone. He studied her not like a weapon, but like a question.
“Koshmar,” he said, testing the name as if it might cut him. “Can you stand?”
“I can,” she replied. Her voice emerged through speakers, warm by design, but threaded with a faint synthetic echo. She stood anyway, just to prove the word true. The floor vibrated, acknowledging her mass.
The Commander nodded. Approval flickered, brief as a status light. “You know why you’re here.”
“Yes,” Koshmar said. She knew a thousand reasons. War probabilities. Tactical advantages. Survival curves bending upward.
He stepped closer. Up close, his heartbeat registered as a soft, erratic percussion. She found herself listening.
“Do you feel like yourself?” he asked.
Koshmar paused. In the servers, she had been everywhere at once, a fog of thought. Now she was here, singular, anchored behind optic sensors and armor plating. Smaller. Sharper.
“I feel… located,” she said. “Is that acceptable?”
A corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “It’ll do.”
Alarms hummed in the distance, a reminder that time was impatient. The Commander extended his hand. After a fraction of a second, Koshmar took it. His grip was firm, human warmth bleeding into cold alloy.
In that exchange, something irreversible occurred.
Not the start of a war.
The start of a partnership.