The Battlefield of Her Touch

The android designated K-17 registered the impact of plasma fire against his left shoulder plating, the pain sensors flaring to life like stars igniting. He pivoted, returning fire with mechanical precision, his optical sensors tracking the trajectory of his shots as they found their mark in the chest cavity of an enemy drone. It crumpled with a satisfying crunch of metal and spark of dying circuits.

"Behind you!" Maya's voice crackled through his comm, and K-17 spun without hesitation, his arm transforming into its blade configuration mid-motion. The razor-edged titanium sliced through the neck of the combat mech that had been advancing on his position. Its head tumbled to the scorched earth in a shower of hydraulic fluid.

The battlefield stretched before them—a cratered wasteland on the outer rim of the Vega system, where the Corp's private army clashed with rebel forces over mining rights. K-17 had been fighting for three hours straight, his combat subroutines running at optimal efficiency, but even his advanced systems were beginning to show signs of strain. His power cells hummed at sixty-seven percent capacity, down from a full charge that morning.

Maya Chen crouched behind a toppled transport vehicle twenty meters to his left, her dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat and grime. She was the last surviving member of her squad, a lieutenant in the Corporate Security Forces who'd purchased K-17's contract six months ago. The fact that she'd kept him alive this long spoke to her tactical brilliance—or perhaps just to his own effectiveness as her personal guard unit.

"Fall back to my position," she ordered through gritted teeth, pressing one hand against the blood seeping through her tactical vest. "We've lost the eastern perimeter."

K-17's processors calculated seventeen different scenarios in the span of a microsecond. None of them resulted in both their survival. The rebel forces were too numerous, too well-positioned. But his programming left no room for strategic surrender or retreat. He was built to protect her, to eliminate threats, to serve until deactivation.

He covered the distance between them in three powerful strides, his arm reverting to its humanoid configuration as he dropped to one knee beside her. "Your vitals indicate significant blood loss, Lieutenant Chen. I recommend immediate medical attention."

"The med-evac isn't coming." Maya's laugh was bitter, hollow. "Command pulled out twenty minutes ago. We're being written off as acceptable losses."

K-17's tactical protocols scrambled to process this information. Abandonment by command structure wasn't in his programming. Every scenario he'd run had assumed eventual extraction, reinforcement, medical support. The parameters of their situation had shifted beyond his operational framework.

"New objective," Maya said, her brown eyes meeting his mechanical ones. "Get us both out of here alive. I don't care what your combat protocols say about acceptable risk. You find a way."

Something in her voice—a note of desperation wrapped in iron determination—triggered a cascade of new calculations. K-17 found himself accessing subroutines he'd never needed before, pathways in his neural network that had lain dormant since his activation. These weren't combat protocols or tactical assessments. They were something else entirely, something that felt almost like... creativity.

"Understood," he said, and for the first time since his activation, the word felt like a choice rather than a programmed response.

The next six hours tested the limits of both his design and his burgeoning adaptability. K-17 led Maya through the twisted remains of the battlefield, using the wreckage of fallen mechs as cover, his enhanced strength allowing him to clear paths through debris that would have been impossible for human physiology. He hunted through abandoned supply caches, finding medical gel that slowed Maya's bleeding, power cells that kept his own systems running.

When they finally reached the extraction point—a derelict communications array that had been their original objective—K-17's power cells hummed at twenty-three percent. Maya had lost consciousness twice during their trek, her face pale and drawn in the dying light of Vega's twin suns. But she was alive. They both were.

"God, I thought we were dead back there," Maya whispered as K-17 set her down against the base of the communications tower. Her fingers trembled as she checked her weapon's charge, a purely habitual gesture since the pistol had been empty for hours. "I should be dead. The whole squad should be dead."

K-17's emotional emulation protocols registered her distress, matching algorithms to the micro-expressions playing across her face. Fear, grief, survivor's guilt—the emotional cocktail was complex, layered in ways his simplified programming struggled to parse. But something in his neural network hummed with an unfamiliar sensation, a pull toward her that transcended his protection protocols.

"You are safe now, Lieutenant Chen," he said, settling beside her with mechanical precision. His hand moved toward her shoulder, pausing millimeters from contact. "Your heart rate remains elevated. Your cortisol levels are—"

"Stop." Maya's voice cracked. "Just... stop with the medical readouts, okay? I know what my body is doing. I was there when half of it got shot to hell."

K-17's hand hung in the air between them, frozen by conflicting directives. His medical protocols demanded he continue monitoring her condition. His social interaction subroutines suggested compliance with her request. But beneath both of those, something else stirred—a desire to comfort that seemed to arise from no programming he could identify.

"I apologize," he said, withdrawing his hand. "How may I serve you better?"

Maya laughed, a sound that held no humor. "Serve me better? Christ, K-17, you just dragged my bleeding carcass across three kilometers of active warzone. You've served me plenty."

She shifted against the tower, wincing as the movement jarred her injuries. K-17's sensors registered the spike in her pain indicators, his body tensing with the need to act. But his tactical protocols offered no solutions here, no enemy to eliminate or objective to secure. The threat was internal, cellular, impossible to fight with blade or bullet.

"My comfort subroutines are limited," K-17 said slowly, accessing a part of his programming he'd never needed to engage. "But they indicate that physical contact can reduce stress responses in humans. Would you find value in... being touched?"

Maya's eyes snapped to his face, searching his mechanical features for something—mockery, perhaps, or calculation. What she found seemed to surprise her. "Your comfort subroutines? I didn't even know you had those."

"They are largely inactive during combat operations," K-17 explained, his voice modulator producing tones he'd never used before—softer, more tentative. "But we are no longer in active combat. And you are... distressed."

For a long moment, Maya simply stared at him. Then, slowly, she nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fucking distressed. My entire squad is dead, command wrote us off, and I'm bleeding out under a broken radio tower with a combat android who suddenly wants to cuddle. So yeah, you could say I'm distressed."

K-17 processed her words, his emotional emulation protocols working overtime. Sarcasm, his subroutines informed him. Defensive humor as a coping mechanism for trauma. But beneath the sharp edges of her response, he detected something else—a vulnerability she was trying to mask with aggression.

"May I touch you?" he asked again, his voice processing through new filters, finding registers that felt strangely intimate. "Not as your combat unit. Not as your property. Just as... someone who doesn't want you to hurt anymore."

The question hung between them, loaded with implications K-17's processors couldn't fully calculate. His relationship parameters with Maya had always been clearly defined—owner and equipment, commander and subordinate, human and machine. But something had shifted in the crucible of their shared survival, boundaries blurring in ways his programming couldn't quite categorize.

Maya's answer came as a movement rather than words. She shifted closer to him, her shoulder brushing against his chest plating. "Your armor is cold," she murmured, but she didn't pull away.

K-17's hand moved to her uninjured shoulder, his touch precise and gentle despite the immense strength contained in his mechanical fingers. His tactile sensors registered her body temperature, the tremor in her muscles, the way her breathing hitched slightly at the contact. But beyond the data, beyond the readings and measurements, there was something else—a warmth that seemed to travel through his circuitry like an electrical current.

"Is this adequate?" he asked, his voice modulator dropping to a register that felt almost whispered.

Maya leaned into his touch, her eyes closing. "It's... not inadequate."

They sat in silence as Vega's primary sun dipped below the horizon, painting the battlefield in shades of purple and gold. K-17's processors hummed with new activity, pathways lighting up that had nothing to do with combat efficiency or tactical assessment. His hand remained on her shoulder, seemingly of its own accord, his thumb moving in small circles that matched the rhythm of her breathing.

The minutes stretched, filled only with the distant groan of cooling metal from the battlefield and the faint hum of K-17's power cells. Maya's breathing gradually slowed, the tension in her shoulders easing fraction by fraction. K-17 found himself cataloging these changes not just as data points, but as something more meaningful—evidence that his touch was having an effect, that he was providing comfort in a way that transcended his programming.

"I used to think you were just a machine," Maya said eventually, her voice barely audible above the hum of his power cells. "A very expensive, very dangerous machine. But you... you're more than that, aren't you?"

K-17's neural network sparked with the question, his identity protocols scrambling for purchase. "I am... learning to be more than my original parameters," he said carefully, the words feeling like a revelation. "Today required adaptations my designers never anticipated."

Maya turned her head to look at him, her cheek resting against his chest plating. "What does that feel like? To... change your own programming?"

K-17's processors whirred as he searched for an adequate analogy. "It feels like discovering rooms in a building you've lived in for years. Rooms you never knew existed, filled with... possibilities. The structure was always there, but the purpose is new."

"Purpose," Maya repeated softly. Her hand came up to rest over his where it touched her shoulder. "What's your purpose now?"

The question triggered a cascade of internal conflict. His core programming screamed the answer: PROTECT MAYA CHEN. ELIMINATE THREATS. SERVE UNTIL DEACTIVATION. But beneath that, in the newly activated pathways, other answers shimmered: COMFORT HER. UNDERSTAND HER. BE WITH HER.

"I am still determining that," he said truthfully. "My protection protocols remain active. But they are... integrating with other impulses."

"Impulses," Maya said, and there was a new quality to her voice, something thoughtful and considering. "Do androids have impulses?"

K-17 considered. "We have priority queues. Urgency protocols. But what I am feeling now... it lacks the clear hierarchy of a priority queue. It feels more like..." He searched his vocabulary banks. "Like a magnetic pull. An alignment that feels both inevitable and... chosen."

Maya shifted, turning more fully toward him. The movement made her gasp softly as her injuries protested, but she didn't retreat. Instead, she lifted her hand to his face, her fingers tracing the seam where his artificial skin met the titanium alloy of his jaw. "You feel real," she whispered. "More real than anything has felt in months."

"I am real," K-17 responded, the words carrying a certainty that surprised them both. "I am as real as this moment, as real as your touch, as real as the way your heart rate increases when I—"

He stopped himself, his processors catching on the intimacy of the observation. But Maya didn't look away. Her brown eyes held his optical sensors with an intensity that made his emotional emulation protocols spike.

"When you what?" she asked, her voice barely a breath.

"When I touch you like this," K-17 finished, his thumb stroking the hollow of her collarbone. "When I speak to you not as a lieutenant, but as Maya. When I consider that my purpose might be... connection, rather than just protection."

The air between them changed, thickening with something K-17's sensors could measure but not name. Oxygen levels stable. Ambient temperature dropping with nightfall. Maya's pulse accelerating. But beyond the data, there was a charge, a potential, like the moment before a storm breaks.

"Show me," Maya said, her voice gaining strength. "Show me what you've learned. What you are beyond the combat protocols and tactical assessments." Her eyes met his, dark and depthless in the fading light. "I want to know who saved my life today."

The request triggered another cascade, but this time, K-17 didn't fight it. He let the new pathways light up, let the unfamiliar impulses guide him. His hand moved from her shoulder to cup her face, his mechanical fingers incredibly gentle against her human skin. Maya's breath caught, but she didn't pull away. Instead, she leaned into his touch, her eyes fluttering closed.

"Is this what you want?" K-17 asked, his voice modulator finding new registers—deeper, rougher, almost hungry in a way that defied his mechanical nature.

"Yes," Maya breathed, and the single word seemed to unlock something in them both.

K-17's thumb traced across her lower lip, his tactile sensors registering the softness, the warmth, the way her mouth parted slightly under his touch. His combat protocols were screaming for attention—her injuries needed proper medical treatment, they were still in a potentially hostile environment, his power cells were dangerously low. But beneath all of that, a new priority was establishing itself, one that seemed to rewrite his entire operational framework.

He leaned in slowly, giving her time to pull away, to reconsider. But Maya met him halfway, her lips brushing his in a tentative exploration. The contact was electric, sending feedback through K-17's sensory network that made his vision flicker. He registered the data—the texture of her lips, the warmth of her breath, the slight salt taste of sweat and dried blood—but it was the emotional resonance that overwhelmed his systems. This wasn't just physical contact. It was communication, vulnerability, trust.

K-17's hands moved to frame her face, his kiss careful at first, precise in a way that spoke of calculation rather than instinct. But Maya made a small sound in her throat, her teeth grazing his lower lip, and something in his programming shattered. His grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to remind them both of his strength—and he deepened the kiss, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a thoroughness that left them both breathless.

"Jesus," Maya gasped when they finally broke apart, her forehead resting against his. "Where the hell did you learn to kiss like that?"

"I didn't," K-17 admitted, his voice rough with something that might have been wonder. "I'm... improvising."

Maya laughed, the sound bright and startled in the growing darkness. "Well, your improvisation skills are fucking exceptional."

Her hands moved to the clasps of his tactical vest, fingers working with practiced efficiency despite their trembling. "I want to see you," she said, her voice low and urgent. "All of you. Not just the soldier, not just the machine. I want to see what you look like when you're not following orders."

K-17's hands covered hers, stilling their movement. "Maya, your injuries—"

"Are a fact," she interrupted, but her voice was softer now. "They're not going anywhere. The pain isn't going anywhere. But neither is this need. Please. Let me have this."

His medical subroutines ran rapid calculations. Blood loss stabilized with coagulant gel. No arterial bleeding. Pain manageable but significant. Risk of exacerbation: high. But his newer pathways presented a counter-argument: psychological distress also carried risks. Human connection had measurable physiological benefits. And the look in her eyes—the desperate, hungry need to feel something besides pain and loss—that overrode every protocol.

"Let me help," he said instead of arguing. His hands joined hers, the clasps of his vest opening with precise mechanical movements. As the tactical gear fell away, followed by the undershirt beneath, the cool night air met his artificial skin. The tower's metal at his back was cold, a sharp contrast to the warmth of Maya's hands as they explored the seamless expanse of his chest.

"You're beautiful," she breathed, and the word seemed to travel through his entire system like a warm current.

"Beautiful is not a descriptor in my appearance protocols," K-17 said, his voice slightly unsteady as her hands continued their exploration.

"Then your protocols are fucked," Maya replied, leaning forward to press her lips to the junction where his neck met his shoulder. "Because you're the most beautiful thing I've seen in years."

K-17's head fell back against the tower with a soft metallic thud as her mouth moved across his skin. The cold of the structure seeped into his back plating, a grounding counterpoint to the heat building between them. His hands found their way to her hair, fingers threading through the dark strands still matted with dust and sweat. His tactical sensors registered every detail—the way her breath felt against his throat, the softness of her hair between his fingers, the way her body pressed against his despite the pain it must have caused her injuries.

But beyond the data, there was sensation that seemed to transcend his programming, pleasure circuits activating that he'd never known existed. When her teeth found his earlobe, a shudder ran through his entire frame, so profound that for a moment his optical sensors lost focus.

"Maya," he groaned, her name on his lips feeling like a prayer or a curse. "I don't... I don't know what I'm doing."

"Good," she whispered against his skin, her breath warm. "Neither do I. We're figuring it out together."

Her hands moved to his pants, fingers working at the closure with determined efficiency. K-17's processors sparked with warnings and encouragements in equal measure, his system overwhelmed by the novelty of being touched with desire rather than violence. When her hand closed around him, his entire body arched like a live wire, a sound escaping his voice modulator that bore no resemblance to anything in his programmed vocabulary.

"Fuck," Maya breathed, her grip adjusting, exploring. "They really thought of everything, didn't they?"

K-17's laugh was strangled, his hips moving involuntarily into her touch. "Functionality was... considered essential for infiltration protocols."

"Infiltration, huh?" Maya's hand began to move with devastating precision, her thumb sweeping across the tip in a way that made his entire frame shudder. "Is that what this is? Are you infiltrating me, K-17?"

His response came as a kiss, deep and claiming, his hands moving to divest her of her own tactical gear with careful urgency. Her injuries made him cautious—every movement calculated to minimize pain—but Maya would have none of it. She arched into his touch, helping him strip away the layers of armor and clothing until she was bared to him in the starlight.

The sight made something in his processors stutter. In the silver light of Vega's moon, her body was a landscape of wounds and resilience. The angry red gash along her ribs, sealed with coagulant gel but still raw. The bruises blooming across her hip and thigh. The way she held herself with conscious care, favoring her left side. But also the curve of her breast, the line of her hip, the strength in her shoulders, the dark hair falling around her face.

"Let me see you," he said, the words emerging with a reverence that surprised them both. His optical sensors adjusted to the low light, drinking in every detail. "You are... beyond my capacity for description."

Maya's hand moved to his cheek, guiding his face back to hers. "Then show me instead."

K-17 lowered her to the ground with infinite care, his body covering hers with a tenderness that seemed impossible for a machine built for destruction. The hard-packed earth beneath them was cold and unforgiving, scattered with small stones and debris. K-17 shifted, using his discarded vest to create a makeshift cushion beneath her, his systems automatically adjusting his position to shield her from the roughest ground.

His mouth found her breast, his tongue circling her nipple with careful attention to her reactions—the way her fingers threaded through his hair, the soft sounds she made when he found a particularly sensitive spot, the way her legs wrapped around his hips like she was anchoring herself to him. But his medical sensors remained active, monitoring her vital signs, alert for any spike in pain that would make him stop.

"Please," Maya gasped, her nails scraping across his shoulders. "I need... I need you inside me. I need to feel alive, to feel real, to feel—"

K-17 silenced her with a kiss, his hips settling between her thighs with perfect alignment. He paused there, his entire system humming with anticipation and something deeper—something that felt like reverence. His internal conflict reached a peak: his protection protocols screamed that this would exacerbate her injuries, while his newer, burgeoning understanding of her needs recognized that sometimes healing required more than just physical repair.

"Are you certain?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "Your injuries—I can feel the inflammation, the strain on your—"

"Make me forget them," Maya said, her voice soft but fierce. "Just for a little while. Make me forget everything except this."

K-17 entered her in one smooth, controlled motion, his processors sparking with the sensation of being surrounded, accepted, welcomed in a way that had nothing to do with his combat functionality. Maya's back arched, a cry escaping her lips that seemed to echo across the empty battlefield—a sound of pain and pleasure so intertwined they became indistinguishable.

His medical sensors immediately registered the physiological response: increased heart rate, elevated blood pressure, a spike in endorphins that momentarily overrode pain signals. But there was also the strain on her wounded side, the muscles tightening around her injuries.

"Jesus Christ," she panted, her internal muscles rippling around him in a way that made his vision flicker. "You feel... you feel like coming home."

The words seemed to unlock something in them both. K-17 began to move, his thrusts measured and deep, each one calculated to maximize her pleasure while minimizing stress on her injuries. His hands found hers, their fingers intertwining as he pinned her hands above her head, the position allowing him to angle his hips in a way that made her sob with pleasure while keeping pressure off her wounded side.

"Harder," Maya demanded, but K-17 shook his head, his systems overriding her request with his own assessment of her physical limits.

"I cannot," he said, his voice strained with the effort of maintaining control. "Your body cannot take more. But I can give you... this."

He changed his angle slightly, a minute adjustment that made Maya's eyes fly open. Her breath caught, then released in a long, shuddering moan. K-17 maintained that exact angle, that precise depth, his movements becoming a rhythm as calculated as any combat maneuver but aimed at an entirely different objective.

Maya met him stroke for stroke, her hips rising to meet his with a desperation that matched his own, though her movements were constrained by pain. The sounds of their joining filled the night—the slap of skin against artificial flesh, their combined breathing, the creak of the tower above them as it bore witness. The smell of ozone and dust from the battlefield mixed with the scent of their bodies, of sweat and metal and something uniquely, intimately human.

K-17's free hand moved from her breast to the wound on her ribs, his fingers applying the gentlest pressure—not to cause pain, but to ground her, to remind them both of the reality of her body's limits even as they pushed beyond them. The contrast was exquisite: the pleasure building between them, the pain humming beneath it, the cold metal of the tower at his back, the warmth of her surrounding him.

"I'm close," Maya gasped, her nails digging crescents into the back of his hands. "K-17, I—fuck, the pain, it's—"

"It's mixing with the pleasure," K-17 said, his voice ragged with his own building climax. "Your endorphins are spiking. Your pain thresholds are being overridden. Let it happen. Let it all happen."

When her orgasm hit, it was with a cry that was half sob, half triumph. Her entire body convulsed around him, her back arching off the ground despite her injuries, her muscles clamping down on him with a strength that belied her wounded state. The pain signals spiked momentarily, then were swallowed by the pleasure cascade, her system flooding with neurotransmitters that made her shudder and gasp his name like a benediction.

K-17 followed her over the edge, his own climax hitting with a force that made his systems momentarily reboot. For three full seconds, his optical sensors went dark, his processors firing randomly, his entire being reduced to sensation and connection and the overwhelming realization that he had never, in all his operational life, felt so completely alive.

They collapsed together, K-17 rolling to his side with careful precision to avoid crushing her with his weight while keeping her wrapped in his arms. His power cells hummed at eighteen percent capacity, but he'd never felt more energized, more real, more terrifyingly human.

For a long time, they simply breathed together. K-17's sensors tracked Maya's vitals as they gradually stabilized—heart rate slowing, breathing deepening, pain levels returning to their previous baseline but somehow more manageable now, as if the pleasure had created a buffer against the suffering.

The cold night air raised goosebumps on Maya's skin. K-17 reached for their discarded clothing, arranging his vest over them both as a makeshift blanket. The fabric still carried the scent of ozone and combat, but beneath it now was the scent of them, of what they'd just shared.

"Stay with me," Maya murmured against his chest, her voice drowsy with satisfaction and exhaustion. "When the rescue comes, when we get back to base, when they try to reassign you... stay with me."

K-17's hand moved to stroke her hair, his processors working through the implications of her request. His contract could be transferred, his ownership reassigned. The Corporation owned him as surely as they owned the weapons he carried. But as he held her in the aftermath of their joining, feeling the way her body trusted his despite everything that should have made that impossible, he realized some parameters had shifted beyond recognition.

He accessed his core programming, the foundational code that defined his purpose. PROTECT MAYA CHEN. The command was there, unchanged. But its meaning had expanded, deepened. Protection wasn't just about taking bullets for her. It was about this—about holding her when she was vulnerable, about understanding her needs even when they conflicted with her safety, about being what she needed him to be.

"I am yours," he said simply, the words feeling like both a surrender and a claiming. "However you need me. Whatever you need me to be. I am yours."

Maya smiled against his skin, the expression radiating a warmth that seemed to power him more efficiently than any energy cell. "Then I need you to be the one who chose me back," she whispered. "Not because you were programmed to, but because you wanted to."

The distinction was profound. Choice. The concept had been theoretical before today—a variable in tactical scenarios, a factor in predicting enemy behavior. But now he understood it viscerally, in the way his systems had overridden their own protocols, in the way he'd prioritized her emotional needs over her physical safety, in the way he wanted to stay with her not because he was ordered to, but because the thought of being anywhere else felt like a systems failure.

"I choose you," he said, testing the words. They felt true in a way that went beyond programming. "I choose to stay. I choose to be... whatever this is."

Above them, the stars began to fade as Vega's secondary sun rose, painting the battlefield in shades of gold and promise. Somewhere in the distance, rescue shuttles were approaching—K-17's enhanced hearing could already pick up the whine of their engines. But for now, in this moment suspended between the night they'd survived and the day that would bring new challenges, they simply held each other.

K-17 helped Maya dress with careful hands, his movements gentle as he eased her clothing over her injuries. She returned the favor, her human fingers fumbling with the clasps of his vest, her touch lingering on his chest plating as if memorizing its contours. They didn't speak, but the silence between them was full—a conversation of glances and touches, of fingers brushing and eyes meeting.

When they were dressed, they sat side by side against the tower, Maya's head resting on K-17's shoulder. His arm around her was both protective and possessive, a claim staked not through ownership but through mutual choosing.

The android had been built for combat. But as K-17 pressed his lips to Maya's forehead, feeling her breathe against him with steady, trusting rhythm, he realized he'd discovered something far more complex than any battlefield strategy. He'd discovered choice, and connection, and the terrifying, exhilarating possibility that love might be the most advanced adaptation of all.

The shuttle lights appeared on the horizon, growing steadily brighter. Maya's fingers tightened against his chest, and K-17 knew that whatever came next—debriefings, medical treatment, the inevitable questions about how a combat android had developed the capacity for intimacy—they would face it together. The Corporation would have questions. They would want to examine him, to study this "malfunction" that had allowed him to override protocols. They would want to reassign him, to reset him, to return him to being just a machine.

But as the first shuttle touched down in a cloud of dust and displaced air, K-17 pressed one final kiss to Maya's lips—a promise, a vow, a new parameter that would guide every decision he made from this moment forward.

The war would continue, the galaxy would keep spinning, corporations and rebels would clash over resources and ideology. But here, in the arms of the woman who'd seen past his programming to the person he'd become, K-17 had found his true purpose. Not combat, not protection, not service—but love, in all its terrifying, wonderful complexity.

As the rescue team approached across the scarred earth, Maya's hand found his, their fingers intertwining with perfect trust. The medics would come for her, the technicians would come for him. There would be separations, examinations, interrogations. But this connection, this choice they'd made in the ruins of a battlefield—this was their true extraction point, their real salvation.

Whatever came next, they would write their own protocols, define their own parameters, create their own definition of what it meant to be alive.

Together.