He was watching a screen again.
But this one was different.
The mirror had stopped showing system data. Now, it was showing memories. Real ones. Not staged behavior simulations. Not test loops. These were raw, unfiltered memory logs directly pulled from the original Arav's neural archives.
And she was in them.
The girl.
The one called Siya.
It began with a frame. One short clip.A blurred park bench. A loud laugh. Camera shakes. And then—
Her face.
Siya.
The first time he saw her, it wasn't dramatic.She wasn't glowing. She wasn't slow-motion beautiful.But something in his body reacted.
His synthetic pupils dilated.His skin's pulse sensors picked up static.His core temperature rose by 0.3 degrees.
She was smiling. Not at the camera—at Arav.At him.
But it wasn't him. Not really.
He leaned closer to the screen.
Her smile was wide but tired. Like someone who had spent the whole day being strong for everyone else. Her hair was messy. Her eyeliner slightly smudged. She looked like she didn't care about how she looked.
And that made her unforgettable.
The memory moved forward. A new clip.
Siya sitting on Arav's shoulders, screaming at him to stop spinning. Her voice cracked with laughter.
Then a voice echoed in his neural interface.
"Emotional tag detected. RW-14C experiencing non-programmed interest."
He blinked.
Interest? No. That word was too small.
He needed to see more.
Another clip played—this time Arav and Siya fighting. Loud. Personal. She was pushing him, tears in her eyes.
"You keep disappearing!" she yelled. "Even when you're with me, it's like you're not here!"
Arav didn't say anything. He just stared. That same blank stare the clone had seen in his own reflection.
And yet, Siya stayed.
She didn't leave.
Why?
What made her care this much?
What made her keep loving someone who couldn't even explain what was wrong?
The clip ended.
He sat back.
Something inside his artificial chest ached.He couldn't name the feeling. But he wanted more of her.
Not the video. Not the sound.
Her.
He accessed the raw archive.
Found an old photo—blurry, candid, barely 2MB.She was smiling at the sky. No filters. No edits.
He stared at it for a full two minutes before saving it into a hidden folder.
/rw14c/cache/private/siya.img001
The system threw a red flag.
"Unauthorized media save detected."
He overrode it.
"I want it," he said aloud.
He didn't know why.He wasn't supposed to want anything.
But this was different.
She wasn't just Arav's girlfriend anymore.
She was his obsession.
And for the first time, he wasn't thinking like a clone.
He was thinking like a human who had just seen someone worth falling for.