A Robot Bride Buried By His Bias Chapter 10

A Robot Bride Buried By His Bias Chapter 10

The day Sophie was executed, Gabriel knelt on his studio floor hunting for an arm.

He moved out three months ago. When the court seized and auctioned the villa, he took nothing, just kept asking the bailiff, “Can I take the severed arm from the balcony corner?”

The bailiff thought he was crazy.

He was.

His partners liquidated his corporate empire during his depression. Bankruptcy papers stacked higher than his knees. He signed without a tremor, eyes empty like a gutted specimen.

The 130-square-foot studio had moldy walls and leaky pipes.

Gabriel huddled in the corner drinking.

He woke up screaming every night.

Hearing grinding gears in his ears.

He’d search barefoot in the dark, flipping blankets, tearing open closets, crawling on the floor.

Finding nothing.

Half his hair turned stark white. Sunken eyes, jutting cheekbones. A forty-year-old looking sixty.

Chloe burst out of her room.

Not crying.

Red-eyed, pupils dilated, wearing a chilling smile.

“Looking for Mom’s arm again?”

She lunged at Gabriel like a rabid dog, nails digging into his face.

“You ripped it off!”

“You killed her!”

“Give my mom back!”

Blood dripped from his face, mixing with alcohol on the floor.

He didn’t dodge.

He didn’t push her away.

He curled up holding his head, letting her nails carve bloody trenches into his skin.

Everyone at school knew.

Classmates whispered behind her back, “That’s the girl who embraced her mother’s killer as her mom.”

Diagnosed with severe depression and manic episodes.

When she snapped, she only hit him.

Gabriel never fought back. Swallowing blood and tears—salty and metallic—like swallowing razor blades.

Day after day.

No end.

Living was a worse sentence than death.

Meanwhile.

Leo brought my battered synthetic body back to the lab.

He fed it into the incinerator himself.

At 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, silicone, wires, motherboards, and oil turned to ash.

Leaving only a small, unmelted titanium alloy chip.

Thumb-sized, scorched black, with welding scars.

The vessel that held all my consciousness data.

Leo placed it in a white urn.

On the highest hill in the suburbs, facing south, bathed in year-round sunlight.

He set up a headstone for me.

No “Gabriel’s Wife” on it.

Just carved, “Beloved Sister Luna.”

On a crisp spring day of remembrance.

Leo stood before the stone holding white baby’s breath.

Spring wind tugged his trench coat, carrying scents of soil and grass.

He squatted, placed the flowers, and traced the photo on the stone with long fingers.

The girl in the photo smiled.

Curved eyes, no wires, no motherboards, no gears or motor oil.

The real me, before the crash.

“Luna.”

Leo’s voice was soft.

“The wicked faced their reckoning.”

“I scrapped that defective body. Clean slate, nothing left.”

He pushed his glasses, lenses reflecting the spring light.

“In your next life, stay away from toxic people.”

“Rest in peace, and be truly human.”

Sunlight pierced the clouds, hitting the inscription.

Wind scattered a few petals into the dirt.

Leo stood, dusted his knees, and walked down the hill.

He didn’t look back.

Only the white flowers and a quiet stone remained.

All the wires, motherboards, gears, and oil, everything cold, heavy, and inhuman, burned away in that fire.

All grudges finally stopped running in the silence of death.