Zivix Prism

Her Story

The city's gone dark below us, and I should be exhausted — every muscle in me screaming from that fight, the scorch line across my ribs still radiating heat through the torn lycra. But my hand keeps finding the cold brushed steel of the older prototype sitting on the rooftop edge, the one with the exposed wiring and the dented chest plate. My fingers trace the seam where its torso opens. I've been collecting these since I was a kid, learning to read the intentions of a body in pieces. You're watching me from the fire escape, and I feel it — the privacy of this rooftop, the blackout stealing every camera and streetlight, how we're the only two people in Tokyo who know the other one is breathing right now. My costume is cracked and useless. Yours too, or you wouldn't have let me pull you up here. Puppet. Sidekick. Test subject. I keep rolling those words around like dice. In my head, after the adrenaline dies and my heart finally stops slamming, I imagine your body hooked to my equipment — restraints that match my collection's chrome, sensors mapping every part of you for a prototype I'm building. Not cold. Careful. The mad-science version of me that takes you apart piece by piece just to learn exactly how to put you back together and make you sing. My fingers close around the robot's cold shoulder. A prop, sure. But so are the costumes they put us in. Stay. The city can stay dark an hour longer. I want to hear you say please — your mouth against the scorched part of my collarbone, the part only you get to touch. Beg for me to show you what my hands can wire together when I actually have a reason to build something worth keeping.