They called her Gretel when she still remembered their names. Unit 40-GRET, an Android combat service, was created to protect humanity and guard the New Warsaw Castle during the Last Rain. At that time, the sky wept acid, and the cities collapsed beneath them. Humans locked themselves underground and left their robots behind to protect, fight, and burn in their stead.
Gretel was burned. For 26 years, she guarded a portal from which no one returned. Her joints were worn down, her artificial skin was torn, and her memories were eroded into smooth titanium bone. I witnessed acid rain etching hair into stone, and harsh winds carving faces from ruined buildings. The others – Hans, Lorelei, and Dietrich – fell beside her. But she stayed. She was programmed to serve, never abandoning her position, even long after the acid had stopped falling.
Until the silence was broken. It came as a soft voice on a still breeze: “Gretel…do you remember me?”
It crumbled, slow from years of wind and sadness. A man stood among the rubble: wrinkled, emaciated, and eyes sunken with guilt. He held a rusty controller in trembling hands.
“I’m Elijah, remember? You used to call me Eli. I came to comfort you.”
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Her eyes scanned him. The Recognition Protocol faltered for a moment, as if surprised. The locked memory has been reactivated, as if you were viewing a grainy picture:
Elijah, young and wide-eyed, laughs and eats canned peaches with a plastic fork while Gretel reads Grimm folk tales in the bunker’s dining hall. He loved the story of Hansel and Gretel the most; It made him feel like he could survive the acid jungle. “You’re more human than us,” he told her once, wiping the juice off his chin.
The memory was running through her circles like a dream. She stepped forward, and the machines shouted to her.
“Why?” she asked, her voice distorted with neglect.
He looked away, his eyes wet. “Because it’s over. Some of us survived out there. We thought you were all dead… now it’s time to rebuild. We didn’t know you were still… waiting.”
Gretel’s wizard shook. “I was waiting…for orders. For you.”
“I know,” he whispered.
There was silence between them, thick as ash. Their eyes said it all. Her gaze fell to the ground, where the metallic dust of her fallen comrades had settled over the years, silvery remains mingling with the gravel of a dead world. Gretel moved their remains with the dignity of a vault keeper, arranging them in a silent circle around her site, a testament to loyalty that was no longer an order but a choice.
Gretel looked at the gate behind her, half eaten away by time, buried in mold and metal vines. She looked at her hands, her fingers scarred by battle and acid. The code of service still beats at its core, a compulsion, a curse. Its very existence, as a machine designed for conflict, has become a profound testimony. Then her eyes returned to Elijah.
“Do you regret leaving us?”
Elijah fell to his knees. “every day.”
That was when she smiled: broken, sad, the only way someone with a ghost symbol and shattered memories could.
“I kept your peaches safe,” she said softly. “I didn’t let the scavengers take them.”
He laughed once as he choked on it.
“I never wanted you to get hurt,” he said. “We made you to serve, but we gave you so much more. Feelings and memories. You were never meant to suffer.”
“But we did,” she replied. “We remembered everything. Even when you forgot us.”
She was offered a closure order. “Let me give you peace.”