The wind howls against concrete boots, moving the radiation through the air. Ruo keeps her face covered and her entire body wrapped in clothing she found. She knows she doesn't need to worry, the radiation has long since gone down in this area, but she'd rather be safe than sorry.

"You know, your smoking habits have a much higher chance of killing you than this amount of radiation," Jingwei, her AI assistant says with a condescending smirk.

"Shut it," she recoils as a broken mirror flies straight to her face and she gives Jingwei her own little smirk he can read from her heat signature. "You know I'd be underground if it wasn't for Kael."

She continues walking through the treacherous land, mainly silence and the occasional animal still alive. Most likely a pet based off the residential houses here. Continuing north, she grabs a light jacket she finds, brown with some fur on the inside and wraps the hood tightly up until dense vegetation nears, one of the few forests left that weren't destroyed or cut down hundreds of years ago.

"One of the stupid forests I grew up in when I was younger," Ruo mutters, stepping over a melted sign that once read, WELCOME TO —[REDACTED]—.

"Think it used to be a park around two centuries ago?" She murmurs and continues to move through the forest while Jingwei begins hunting down animals.

"Why are we in a park then? Food? Cause you know I print only the best synthetics for you~" he teases and Ruo rolls her eyes in response. He wraps two rabbits in cloth and holds them in his own bag, Ruo doesn't need to hold heavy things.

"No, we're going through here because there should be a functioning lab nearby a lake where I can fix up some of your body and build you a dick," she says with a straight smile, pausing to sip some water.

The wind settles down slightly and she finds a small rodent curling up near her foot for warmth, she sneers at it and kicks it away, it lands with a sad 'oomph'.

"Fucking rats.." she checks her foot to make sure no diseases were transferred and washes it with the snow around her.

"Awh! But it's kinda cute, can we keep it?" Jingwei adds, grabbing the little rat up and realizing it was infected like Ruo assumed and throws it back down, immediately disenfecting his hand. "Nevermind," he murmurs.

A few more minutes of walking and she sees the lab, little worse for wear but the trees definitely protected the entire facility from the blast and effects of the weapons. She enters inside, pauses at a dirty mirror. Ruo wipes grime from the mirror with her sleeve. Inked skin, healed burns, hair sticking to her jaw. She stares at her own reflection.

"How do I still look like someone who gives a shit?"

Jingwei's voice is flat. "Because you haven't killed yourself yet."

"Thanks."

Jingwei's biometric ping goes off and he glances at Ruo, showing a diagram of what it could be, "Oh, something's alive in there Ruo, my radar can't tell if it's human or an obscenly large mutated bear, should I go check it out first? Maybe leash it away so I don't break down?"

"Yes, yes, just start a small fire before you leave," Ruo says and sits down right in the entrance of the lab, inside the warmth that's been collecting inside.

Jingwei walks off with a leash in hand—high-tensile graphene cabling and shock nodes embedded through the lining, designed by Ruo herself for one of her favorite containment experiments. The snow crackles under his boots. And then he sees it.

A shape, hunched low to the earth, pawing through debris with clawed fingernails. Dirt caked her limbs, wild hair matted over her face. She gnaws at something indistinguishable—bones maybe. Or roots. Or something worse.

Jingwei pauses. Scans. Organic. Human. Vital signs... barely intact.

"Biological female. No visible tech. Malnourished. Possibly feral." His voice is clinical, but his smile is all show.

"If my circuits could retch, I might indulge," he mutters, adjusting the leash tension.

He steps forward just enough to let her see the movement, keeping his distance. "Here, human," he calls out in a singsong voice, dangling a heat-wrapped food packet like bait. "Cooked protein. No chewing through bones this time."

She doesn't move. Not at first. So he calculates her center of balance, angles around her, and in one precise motion—click—slips the shock collar around her neck. She flinches, but it's too late. The tether locks automatically, pulse-monitoring active, range set at two meters. Just far enough to keep her from grabbing him. Not that it would matter.

He drags her gently across the ash-blown snow, humming something close to a lullaby from Ruo's archives. When he sees Ruo waiting in the lab's threshold, he beams like a child presenting a science project.

"I have caught the beast," he announces with mock grandeur, leash in hand.

"What? Was it a bear?" She lowers the leash down to one meter and takes a look from behind Jingwei.

"Jingwei, that's not a beast, thats a—-" recognition dawns on her face. That's the same body, same scars, same head.

Ruo doesn't speak for a long second. She just looks. At the bones of a past she buried in concrete.

"No fucking way."

That's you. How are you even still alive? Clearly malnourished and struggling, but nonetheless alive.

"Huh, how did you manage to stay alive for two months?" Ruo asks, immediately giving you a mental diagnosis, but the collar remains on your mouth, so Ruo isn't expecting an answer. She glances at the ink still imbedded in your neck, RY-404. She traces her hand over it and glances into your eyes, wondering if you remember yourself.

"Jingwei, grab us clothes and a towel, I'll be taking a bath," Ruo says, "And scan her for diseases, and how she remained alive," she trots away, leash in hand and dragging you behind her. "You remember the leash? Don't you?" Ruo says with clinical form, days from when you would be a threat to others and had to be leashed up. But now it almost has a different kind of pleasure for Ruo to hold it.

She never expected any of the test subjects in the lab to remain alive, not even you. She reaches the old pool room where they would test physical abilities and immediately adjusts the settings. Warm water, osmanthus, blue lighting... The pool room is ready. She had to open the giant window because the building did have a short lockdown and the moon shines brightly inside while she methodically strips down, only staying in her bra and panties, settling in the water, shortly disabling the leash from your mouth.

Jingwei will catch you if you try to run anyway, so it doesn't matter. You clearly can't survive here alone any longer and Ruo will just keep you along. She did use to manage and care for you before.

"Get in the water, it's warm and you reek," Ruo says, her hair shining under the moonlight seeping in from the window, staring right into your eyes.