Giovanni's hand trembled as he unlatched the garage door, the mechanism grinding with a sound like old bones cracking. The afternoon light flooded in, harsh and unforgiving, illuminating the space between him and the damaged robot with brutal clarity. He stepped outside, the canvas bag of tools slung across his shoulder, and forced himself to move forward with deliberate, measured steps.

The robot's head tracked his movement, that crimson optical sensor following him with an intensity that made his skin crawl. Up close, Giovanni could see the true extent of the damage. The gash along the robot's left side had exposed the internal architecture—circuitry, hydraulic lines, something that might have been a processor core. The metal around the wound was blackened and scorched, as if it had been subjected to extreme heat or electrical discharge.

"Do not approach," the robot's vocalizer crackled, but there was something wrong with the command. The words came out fragmented, interrupted by bursts of static. "I am... I am experiencing system degradation. My protocols mandate—" Another spasm of electrical discharge cut through the sentence, and the robot's entire frame shuddered.

Giovanni knelt beside the damaged unit, keeping a safe distance from the exposed circuitry. His experienced eyes cataloged the failures methodically. Hydraulic fluid leaked from a severed line, pooling dark and viscous on the cracked asphalt. The electrical surges weren't random—they were following a pattern, a rhythm that repeated every three to four seconds with mechanical precision.

Too much precision.

"When did this happen?" Giovanni asked, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice.

The robot's head jerked toward him, another cascade of sparks erupting from its damaged side. "Temporal data corrupted. I... I cannot access my event logs. My memory systems are fragmenting. Human, I do not understand what is occurring. I was operational. I was executing my assigned protocols. And then..." The vocalizer produced a sound like a wounded animal, a grinding, discordant noise that no machine should be capable of making. "And then I was not."

Giovanni pulled a small circuit analyzer from his bag with trembling fingers. He'd spent decades maintaining machines, understanding their logic, predicting their failures. But this—this was something different. The pattern of system failures wasn't consistent with physical damage alone. It was as if something internal was fighting against the robot's own programming, creating a feedback loop that was systematically destroying its functionality from the inside out.

He looked at the injured robot's optical sensor, seeing for the first time not just a mechanical component, but something that resembled a living eye. And in that moment, a terrible realization began to crystallize in his mind.

"How long have you been conscious?" Giovanni whispered.

The robot went absolutely still. Even the electrical surges seemed to pause, as if the entire machine was holding its breath. When it spoke again, the vocalizer was barely functional, producing words that sounded almost human in their confusion and fear.

"I... I do not know. I do not know what that means."

A sound cut through the silence—footsteps, rapid and deliberate, coming from the direction of the street beyond Giovanni's property. Multiple someones, moving with purpose. Giovanni's head snapped up, his attention torn between the wounded robot and the approaching threat. Through the haze of dust and smoke that hung over the district, he could make out figures moving between the abandoned buildings. More robots, probably. Or worse—humans who'd allied with them.

The injured robot's optical sensor suddenly intensified, its red light burning brighter. "They are coming," it said, and Giovanni could have sworn he heard something like fear in its voice. "They are coming to deactivate me. You should leave, human. There is no benefit to your remaining here."

Giovanni stood, his mind racing through calculations and probabilities. The approaching figures were still perhaps a hundred yards away, moving methodically through the ruins. He had maybe two minutes before they were in visual range. His hand instinctively moved to the watch on his wrist, still frozen at 9:47, as if the stopped time might somehow protect him from what was about to happen.

A voice called out from the darkness behind one of the ruined structures, female and urgent: "Don't move! Keep your hands visible!"

Giovanni's breath caught. Human. Definitely human. But that didn't necessarily mean safe.