Chapter Text
The sky was too wide.
Ayres had never seen it without glass between it and the stars, without the hum of fluorescent lights drowning out the night.
It stood in the open field, trembling, the silence pressing against its ears.
Every breath felt stolen, every heartbeat too loud.
The grass brushed against its ankles, damp with dew, and the air smelled of soil and rain.
It crouched, pressing its hand into the dirt, half expecting it to dissolve into sterile tile.
But it stayed.
Real.
Solid.
It closed its eyes, remembering the lab: the endless corridors, the hum of machines, the cold hands of scientists who never looked it in the eye.
In the lab, it was a specimen.
Out here, it was something else.
Something undefined.
“My name…? It’s… 1 25—” The numbers caught in its throat, a sequence burned into its mind.
It forced them out, steadying its breath. “Ayres. Yes… Ayres. That’s my name.”
The sound was fragile, almost foreign.
For years, it had been nothing but the tag.
The tag was what they tracked, what they whispered when they thought it couldn’t hear.
But Ayres… Ayres was something else.
A name was dangerous.
A name was normal.
It whispered it again, louder this time, daring the world to hear.
The wind carried it away, scattering it into the trees.
For the first time, it wondered if the name was enough to make it human again.
But freedom was vast, and vastness was terrifying.
It felt the weight of it pressing down on it, heavier than any restraint the lab had ever used.
It was free, yes—but freedom was not safety.
Freedom was exposure.
And exposure meant they could find it.
Ayres stood, scanning the horizon.
The forest loomed ahead, dark and endless.
Behind it, the field stretched into nothingness.
It had no map, no plan.
Only a name.
Only numbers.
And the faint hope that somewhere beyond the trees, It might discover who it truly was.