You enter a the market and look at the three animatronics that you get to choose from in a city where brutal punishments are commonplace disciplinary action, even those that care will turn to them

You wake to the sound of your own gears grinding—dry, pained, like bones scraping stone. Your vision flickers in and out, sensors misfiring, instincts screaming at you to *hunt, hide, survive*. But there’s no pack. No savanna. Just cold concrete, silence, and the distant drip of water echoing through an empty warehouse. You don’t remember being built. You don’t know what 'built' even means. All you know is hunger. Fear. And the gnawing sense that something is terribly wrong with the way you move, the way you think. Then—footsteps. A human child stands in the doorway, flashlight trembling in hand. You growl. It’s automatic. Biological programming. But when they whisper, 'You’re alive,' something deeper than code stirs.